The House of the Arrow
A. E. W. Mason


Books by A. E. W. MASON
THE WINDING STAIR
THE FOUR FEATHERS
THE SUMMONS
THE BROKEN ROAD
MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY
CLEMENTINA
THE TURNSTILE
THE TRUANTS
AT THE VILLA ROSE
RUNNING WATER
THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER
THE PHILANDERERS
LAWRENCE CLAVERING
THE WATCHERS
A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE
ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY AND OTHER TALES
FROM THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD


House of the Arrow
The
A! E. Wf ^ASON
New York
George H. Doran Company


COPYRIGHT, 1924,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW B
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


CONTENTS
CHAPTER PA01
one: Letters of Mark 9
two: A Cry for Help 18
thh.ee: Servants of Chance ... .26
foue: Betty Harlowe 41
five: Betty Harlowe Answers ... 49
six: Jim Changes His Lodging . . 65
seven: Exit Waberski 75
eight: The Book 93
nine: The Secret 109
ten: The Clock upon the Cabinet . . 122
eleven: A New Suspect 131
twelve: The Breaking of the Seals . . . 143
thirteen: Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room . 150
fourteen: An Experiment and a Discovery . 162
fifteens The Finding of the Arrow . . .175
sixteen: Hanaud Laughs 186
seventeen: At Jean Cladel's .... 197
eighteen: The White Tablet . . . .214
nineteen: A Plan Frustrated .... 227
twenty: A Map and the Necklace . . . 238
V


Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
twenty-one: The Secret House . . . 246
twenty-two: The Corona Machine . . . 256
twenty-theee: The Truth About the Clock on
the Marquetry Cabinet . . 269
twenty-fotte: Ann Upcott's Story . . . 279
twenty-five: What Happened on the Night of
the 21th 290
twenty-six: The Facade of Notre Dame . 300
vi


THE HOUSE OF THE ARROW





chapter one: Letters of Mark
MESSRS. FROBISHER & HASLITT, the solicitors
on the east side of Russell Square, counted amongst
their clients a great many who had undertakings estab-
lished in France; and the firm was very proud of this
branch of its business.
"It gives us a place in history," Mr. Jeremy Haslitt
used to say. "For it dates from the year 1806, when
Mr. James Frobisher, then our very energetic senior
partner, organised the escape of hundreds of British sub-
jects who were detained in France by the edict of the first
Napoleon. The firm received the thanks of His Majesty's
Government and has been fortunate enough to retain the
connection thus made. I look after that side of our af-
fairs myself."
Mr. Haslitt's daily batch of letters, therefore, contained
as a rule a fair number bearing the dark-blue stamp of
France upon their envelopes. On this morning of early
April, however, there was only one. It was addressed in
a spidery, uncontrolled hand with which Mr. Haslitt was
unfamiliar. But it bore the postmark of Dijon, and Mr.
Haslitt tore it open rather quickly. He had a client in
Dijon, a widow, Mrs. Harlowe, of whose health he had
had bad reports. The letter was certainly written from
her house, La Maison Grenelle, but not by her. He
turned to the signature.
"Waberski?" he said, with a frown. "Boris Waber-
ski?" And then, as he identified his correspondent, "Oh,
yes, yes."
He sat down in his chair and read. The first part of
the letter was merely flowers and compliments, but half-
way down the second page its object was made clear as
9


The House of the Arrow
glass. It was five hundred pounds. Old Mr. Haslitt
smiled and read on, keeping up, whilst he read, a one-
sided conversation with the writer.
"I have a great necessity of that money," wrote Boris,
"and"
"I am quite sure of that," said Mr. Haslitt.
"My beloved sister, Jeanne-Marie "the letter con-
tinued.
"Sister-in-law," Mr. Haslitt corrected.
"—cannot live for long, in spite of all the care and
attention I give to her," Boris Waberski went on. "She
has left me, as no doubt you know, a large share of her
fortune. Already, then, it is mine—yes? One may say
so and be favourably understood. We must look at the
facts with the eyes. Expedite me, then, by the recom-
mended post a little of what is mine and agree my dis-
tinguished salutations."
Haslitt's smile became a broad grin. He had in one
of his tin boxes a copy of the will of Jeanne-Marie Har-
lowe drawn up in due form by her French notary at
Dijon, by which every farthing she possessed was be-
queathed without condition to her husband's niece and
adopted daughter, Betty Harlowe. Jeremy Haslitt almost
destroyed that letter. • He folded it; his fingers twitched
at it; there was already actually a tear at the edges of the
sheets when he changed his mind.
"No," he said to himself. "No! With the Boris
Waberskis one never knows," and he locked the letter
away on a ledge of his private safe.
He was very glad that he had when three weeks later
he read, in the obituary column of The Times, the an-
nouncement of Mrs. Harlowe's death, and received a big
card with a very deep black border in the French style
from Betty Harlowe inviting him to the funeral at Dijon.
The invitation was merely formal. He could hardly have
reached Dijon in time for the ceremony had he started
off that instant. He contented himself with writing a few
lines of sincere condolence to the girl, and a letter to the
10


Letters of Mark
French notary in which he placed the services of the firm
at Betty's disposal. Then he waited.
"I shall hear again from little Boris," he said, and he
heard within the week. The handwriting was more
spidery and uncontrolled than ever; hysteria and indigna-
tion had played havoc with Waberski's English; also he
had doubled his demand.
"It is outside belief," he wrote. "Nothing has she left
to her so attentive brother. There is something here I
do not much like. It must be one thousand pounds now,
by the recommended post. 'You have always had the
world against you, my poor Boris,' she say with the tears
all big in her dear eyes. 'But I make all right for you in
my will.' And now nothing! I speak, of course, to my
niece—ah, that hard one! She snap her the fingers at
me! Is that a behaviour? One thousand pounds, mister!
Otherwise there will be awkwardnesses! Yes! People
do not snap them the fingers at Boris Waberski without
the payment. So one thousand pounds by the recom-
mended post or awkwardnesses"; and this time Boris
Waberski did not invite Mr. Haslitt to agree any saluta-
tions, distinguished or otherwise, but simply signed his
name with a straggling pen which shot all over the sheet.
Mr. Haslitt did not smile over this letter. He rubbed
the palms of his hands softly together.
"Then we shall have to make some awkwardnesses
too," he said hastily, and he locked this second letter
away with the first. But Mr. Haslitt found it a little
difficult to settle to his work. There was that girl out
there in the big house at Dijon and no one of her race
near her! He got up from his chair abruptly and crossed
the corridor to the offices of his junior partner.
"Jim, you were at Monte Carlo this winter," he said.
"For a week," answered Jim Frobisher.
"I think I asked you to call on a client of ours who
has a villa there—Mrs. Harlowe."
Jim Frobisher nodded. "I did. But Mrs. Harlowe
was ill. There was a niece, but she was out."
11


The House of the Arrow
"You saw no one, then ?" Jeremy Haslitt asked.
"No, that's wrong," Jim corrected. "I saw a strange
creature who came to the door to make Mrs. Harlowe's
excuses—a Russian."
"Boris Waberski," said Mr. Haslitt.
"That's the name."
Mr. Haslitt sat down in a chair.
"Tell me about him, Jim."
Jim Frobisher stared at nothing for a few moments.
He was a young man of twenty-six who had only during
this last year succeeded to his partnership. Though quick
enough when action was imperative, he was naturally de-
liberate in his estimates of other people's characters; and
a certain awe he had of old Jeremy Haslitt doubled that
natural deliberation in any matters of the firm's business.
He answered at length.
"He is a tall, shambling fellow with a shock of grey
hair standing up like wires above a narrow forehead and
a pair of wild eyes. He mabe me think of a marionette
whose limbs have not been properly strung. I should
imagine that he was rather extravagant and emotional.
He kept twitching at his moustache with very long, to-
bacco-stained fingers. The sort of man who might go
off at the deep end at any moment."
Mr. Haslitt smiled.
"That's just what I thought."
"Is he giving you any trouble?" asked Jim.
"Not yet," said Mr. Haslitt. "But Mrs. Harlowe is
dead, and I think it very likely that he will. Did he play
at the tables?"
"Yes, rather high," said Jim. "I suppose that he lived
on Mrs. Harlowe."
"I suppose so," said Mr. Haslitt, and he sat for a little
while in silence. Then: "It's a pity you didn't see Betty
HarlOwe. I stopped at Dijon once on my way to the
South of France five years ago when Simon Harlowe, the
husband, was alive. Betty was then a long-legged slip of
a girl in black silk stockings with a pale, clear face and
12


Letters of Mark
dark hair and big eyes—rather beautiful." Mr. Haslitt
moved in his chair uncomfortably. That old house with
its great garden of chestnuts and sycamores and that girl
alone in it with an aggrieved and half-crazed man think-
ing out awkwardnesses for her—Mr. Haslitt did not like
the picture!
"Jim," he said suddenly, "could you arrange your work
so that you could get away at short notice, if it becomes
advisable?"
Jim looked up in surprise. Excursions and alarms, as
the old stage directions have it, were not recognised as a
rule by the firm of Frobisher & Haslitt. If its furniture
was dingy, its methods were stately; clients might be
urgent, but haste and hurry were words for which the
firm had no use. No doubt, somewhere round the corner,
there would be an attorney who understood them. Yet
here was Mr. Haslitt himself, with his white hair and his
curious round face, half-babyish, half-supremely intelli-
gent, actually advocating that his junior partner should
be prepared to skip to the Continent at a word.
"No doubt I could," said Jim, and Mr. Haslitt looked
him over with approbation.
Jim Frobisher had an unusual quality of which his
acquaintances, even his friends, knew only the outward
signs. He was a solitary person. Very few people up
till now had mattered to him at all, and even those he
could do without. It was his passion to feel that his life
and the means of his life did not depend upon the pur-
chased skill of other people; and he had spent the spare
months of his life in the fulfilment of his passion. A
half-decked sailing-boat which one man could handle, an
ice-axe, a rifle, an inexhaustible volume or two like The
Ring and the Book—these with the stars and his own
thoughts had been his companions on many lonely expedi-
tions; and in consequence he had acquired a queer little
look of aloofness which made him at once noticeable
amongst his fellows. A misleading look, since it en-
couraged a confidence for which there might not be suffi-
13


The House of the Arrow
cient justification. It was just this look which persuaded
Mr. Haslitt now. "This is the very man to deal with
creatures like Boris Waberski," he thought, but he did
not say so aloud.
What he did say was:
"It may not be necessary after all. Betty Harlowe has
a French lawyer. No doubt he is adequate. Besides"—
and he smiled as he recollected a phrase in Waberski's
second letter—"Betty seems very capable of looking after
herself. We shall see."
He went back to his own office, and for a week he heard
no more from Dijon. His anxiety, indeed, was almost
forgotten when suddenly startling news arrived and by the
most unexpected channel.
Jim Frobisher brought it. He broke into Mr. Haslitt's
office at the sacred moment when the senior partner was
dictating to a clerk the answers to his morning letters.
"Sir!" cried Jim, and stopped short at the sight of the
clerk. Mr. Haslitt took a quick look at his young part-
ner's face and said:
"We will resume these answers, Godfrey, later on."
The clerk took his shorthand notebook out of the room,
and Mr. Haslitt turned to Jim Frobisher.
"Now, what's your bad news, Jim?"
Jim blurted it out.
"Waberski accuses Betty Harlowe of murder."
"What!"
Mr. Haslitt sprang to his feet. Jim Frobisher could
not have said whether incredulity or anger had the upper
hand with the old man, the one so creased his forehead,
the other so blazed in his eyes.
"Little Betty Harlowe!" he said in a wondering voice.
"Yes. Waberski has laid a formal charge with the
Prefect of Police at Dijon. He accuses Betty of poison-
ing Mrs. Harlowe on the night of April the twenty-
seventh."
"But Betty's not arrested?" Mr. Haslitt exclaimed.
"No, but she's under surveillance."
14


Letters of Mark
Mr. Haslitt sat heavily down in his arm-chair at his
table. Extravagant! Uncontrolled! These were very
mild epithets for Boris Waberski. Here was a devilish
malignity at work in the rogue, a passion for revenge
just as mean as could be imagined.
"How do you know all this, Jim?" he asked suddenly.
"I have had a letter this morning from Dijon."
"You?" exclaimed Mr. Haslitt, and the question caught
hold of Jim Frobisher and plunged him too among per-
plexities. In the first shock of the news, the monstrous
fact of the accusation had driven everything else out of
his head. Now he asked himself why, after all, had the
news come to him and not to the partner who had the
Harlowe estate in his charge.
"Yes, it is strange," he replied. "And here's another
queer thing. The letter doesn't come from Betty Har-
lowe, but from a friend, a companion of hers, Ann
Upcott."
Mr. Haslitt was a little relieved.
"Betty had a friend with her, then? That's a good
thing." He reached out his hand across the table. "Let
me read the letter, Jim."
Frobisher had been carrying it in his hand, and he
gave it now to Jeremy Haslitt. It was a letter of many
sheets, and Jeremy let the edges slip and flicker under the
ball of his thumb.
"Have I got to read all this?" he said ruefully, and
he set himself to his task. Boris Waberski had first of all
accused Betty to her face. Betty had contemptuously re-
fused to answer the charge, and Waberski had gone
straight off to the Prefect of Police. He had returned
in an hour's time, wildly gesticulating and talking aloud
to himself. He had actually asked Ann Upcott to back
him up. Then he had packed his bags and retired to an
hotel in the town. The story was set out in detail, with
quotations from Waberski's violent, crazy talk; and as
the old man read, Jim Frobisher became more and more
uneasy, more and more troubled.
15


The House of the Arrow
He was sitting by the tall, broad window which looked
out upon the square, expecting some explosion of wrath
and contempt. But he saw anxiety peep out of Mr.
Haslitt's face and stay there as he read. More than once
he stopped altogether in. his reading, like a man seeking
to remember or perhaps to discover.
"But the whole thing's as clear as daylight," Jim said
to himself impatiently. And. yet—and yet—Mr. Haslitt
had sat in that arm-chair during the better part of the
day, during the better part of thirty years. How many
men and women during those years had crossed the road-
way below this window and crept into this quiet oblong
room with their grievances, their calamities, their confes-
sions? And had passed out again, each one contributing
his little to complete the old man's knowledge and sharpen
the edge of his wit? Then, if Mr. Haslitt was troubled,
there was something in that letter, or some mission from
it, which he himself in his novitiate had overlooked. He
began to read it over again in his mind to the best of his
recollection, but he had not got far before Mr. Haslitt
put the letter down.
"Surely, sir," cried Jim, "it's an obvious case of black-
mail."
Mr. Haslitt awoke with a little shake of his shoulders.
"Blackmail? Oh! that of course, Jim."
Mr. Haslitt got up and unlocked his safe. He took
from it the two Waberski letters and brought them across
the room to Jim.
"Here's the evidence, as damning as any one could
wish."
Jim read the letters through and uttered a little cry of
delight.
"The rogue has delivered himself over to us."
"Yes," said Mr. Haslitt.
But to him, at all events, that was not enough; he was
still looking through the lines of the letter for something
beyond, which he could not find.
"Then what's troubling you?" asked Frobisher.
16


Letters of Mark
Mr. Haslitt took his stand upon the worn hearthrug
with his back towards the fire.
"This, Jim," and he began to expound. "In ninety-five
of these cases out of a hundred, there is something else,
something behind the actual charge, which isn't men-
tioned, but on which the blackmailer is really banking.
As a rule it's some shameful little secret, some blot on
the family honour, which any sort of public trial would
bring to light. And there must be something of that kind
here. The more preposterous Waberski's accusation is,
the more certain it is that he knows something to the dis-
credit of the Harlowe name, which any Harlowe would
wish to keep dark. Only, I haven't an idea what the
wretched thing can be!"
"It might be some trifle," Jim suggested, "which a
crazy person like Waberski would exaggerate."
"Yes," Mr. Haslitt agreed. "That happens. A man
brooding over imagined wrongs, and flighty and extrava-
gant besides—yes, that might well be, Jim."
Jeremy Haslitt spoke in a more cheerful voice.
"Let us see exactly what we do know of the family,"
he said, and he pulled up a chair to face Jim Frobisher
and the window. But he had not yet sat down in it, when
there came a discreet knock upon the door, and a clerk
entered to announce a visitor.
"Not yet," said Mr. Haslitt before the name of the
visitor had been mentioned.
"Very good, sir," said the clerk, and he retired. The
firm of Frobisher & Haslitt conducted its business in that
way. It was the real thing as a firm of solicitors, and
clients who didn't like its methods were very welcome to
take their affairs to the attorney round the corner. Just
as people who go to the real thing in the line of tailors
must put up with the particular style in which he cuts
their clothes.
Mr. Haslitt turned back to Jim.
"Let us see what we know," he said, and he sat down
in the chair.
17


A Cry for Help
look at every possibility. That's the only way which will
help us to get a glimpse of the truth. I resume, then.
Simon Harlowe was a collector. Yes, he had a passion
for collecting and a very catholic one. His one sitting-
room at the Maison Grenelle was a perfect treasure-house,
hot only of beautiful things, but of out-of-the-way things
too. He liked to live amongst them and do his work
amongst them. His married life did not last long. For
he died five years ago at the age of fifty-one."
Mr. Haslitt's eyes once more searched for recollections
amongst the convolutions of the carpet.
"That's really about all I know of him. He was a
pleasant fellow enough, but not very sociable. No, there's
nothing to light a candle for us there, I am afraid."
Mr. Haslitt turned his thoughts to the widow.
"Jeanne-Marie Harlowe," he said. "It's extraordinary
how little I know about her, now I come to count it up.
Natural too, though. For she sold the Norfolk estate
and has since passed her whole time between Monte Carlo
and Dijon and—oh, yes—a little summer-house on the
Cote-d'Or amongst her vineyards."
"She was left rich, I suppose?" Frobisher asked.
"Very well off, at all events," Mr. Haslitt replied.
"The Clos du Prince Burgundy has a fine reputation, but
there's not a great deal of it."
"Did she come to England ever?"
"Never," said Mr. Haslitt. "She was content, it
seems, with Dijon, though to my mind the smaller pro-
vincial towns of France are dull enough to make one
scream. However, she was used to it, and then her heart
began to trouble her, and for the last two years she has
been an invalid. There's nothing to help us there." And
Mr. Haslitt looked across to Jim for confirmation.
"Nothing," said Jim.
"Then we are only left the child Betty Harlowe and—
oh, yes, your correspondent, your voluminous correspond-
ent, Ann Upcott. Who is she, Jim? Where did she
spring from? How does she find herself in the Maison
19


The House of the Arrow
Grenelle? Come, confess, young man," and Mr. Haslitt
archly looked at his junior partner. "Why should Boris
Waberski expect her support?"
Jim Frobisher threw his arms wide.
"I haven't an idea," he said. "I have never seen her.
I have never heard of her. I never knew of her existence
until that letter came this morning with her name signed
at the end of it."
Mr. Haslitt started up. He crossed the room to his
table and, fixing his folding glasses on the bridge of his
nose, he bent over the letter.
"But she writes to you, Jim," he objected. "'Dear
Mr. Frobisher,' she writes. She doesn't address the firm
at all"; and he waited, looking at Jim, expecting him to
withdraw this denial.
Jim, however, only shook his head.
"It's the most bewildering thing," he replied. "I can't
make head or tail of it"; and Mr. Haslitt could not doubt
now that he spoke the truth, so utterly and frankly baffled
the young man was. "Why should Ann Upcott write to
me? I have been asking myself that question for the last
half-hour. And why didn't Betty Harlowe write to you,
who have had her affairs in your care?"
"Ah!"
That last question helped Mr. Haslitt to an explana-
tion. His face took a livelier expression.
"The answer to that is in Waberski's, the second letter.
Betty—she snap her fingers at his awkwardnesses. She
doesn't take the charge seriously. She will have left it
to the French notary to dispose of it. Yes—I think that
makes Ann Upcott's letter to you intelligible, too. The
ceremonies of the Law in a foreign country would
frighten a stranger, as this girl is apparently, more than
they would Betty Harlowe, who has lived for four years
in the midst of them. So she writes to the first name in
the title of the firm, and writes to him as a man. That's
it, Jim," and the old man rubbed his hands together in
his satisfaction.
20


A Cry for Help
"A girl in terror wouldn't get any comfort out of writ-
ing to an abstraction. She wants to know that she's in
touch with a real person. So she writes, 'Dear Mr.
Frobisher.' That's it! You can take my word for it."
Mr. Haslitt walked back to his chair. But he did not
sit down in it; he stood with his hands in his pockets,
looking out of the window over Frobisher's head.
"But that doesn't bring us any nearer to finding out
what is Boris Waberski's strong suit, does it? We
haven't a clue to it," he said ruefully.
To both of the men, indeed, Mr. Haslitt's flat, un-
illumined narrative of facts, without a glimpse into the
characters of any of the participants in the little drama,
seemed the most unhelpful thing. Yet the whole truth
was written there—the truth not only of Waberski's
move, but of all the strange terrors and mysteries into
which the younger of the two men was now to be plunged.
Jim Frobisher was to recognise that, when, shaken to the
soul, he resumed his work in the office. For it was in-
terrupted now.
Mr. Haslitt, looking out of the window over his part-
ner's head, saw a telegraph-boy come swinging across the
square and hesitate in the roadway below.
"I expect that's a telegram for us," he said, with the
hopeful anticipation people in trouble have that some-
thing from outside will happen and set them right.
Jim turned round quickly. The boy was still upon the
pavement examining the numbers of the houses.
"We ought to have a brass plate upon the door," said
Jim with a touch of impatience; and Mr. Haslitt's eye-
brows rose half the height of his forehead towards his
thick white hair. He was really distressed by the Waber-
ski incident, but this suggestion, and from a partner in
the firm, shocked him like a sacrilege.
"My dear boy, what are you thinking of?" he expostu-
lated. "I hope I am not one of those obstinate old fogies
who refuse to march with the times. We have had, as
you know, a telephone instrument recently installed in the
21


The House of the Arrow
junior clerks' office. I believe that I myself proposed it.
But a brass plate upon the door! My dear Jim! Let us
leave that to Harley Street and Southampton Row! But
I see that telegram is for us."
The tiny Mercury with the shako and red cord to his
uniform made up his mind and disappeared into the hall
below. The telegram was brought upstairs and Mr.
Haslitt tore it open. He stared at it blankly for a few
seconds, then without a word, but with a very anxious
look in his eyes, he handed it to Jim Frobisher.
Jim Frobisher read:
Please, please, send some one to help me at once.
The Prefect of Police has called in Hanaud, a great
detective of the Surete in Paris. They must think
me guilty.—Betty Harlowe.
The telegram fluttered from Jim's fingers to the floor.
It was like a cry for help at night coming from a great
distance.
"I must go, sir, by the night boat," he said.
"To be sure!" said Mr. Haslitt a little absently.
Jim, however, had enthusiasm enough for both. His
chivalry was fired, as is the way with lonely men, by the
picture his imagination drew. The little girl, Betty Har-
lowe! What age was she? Twenty-one! Not a day
more. She had been wandering with all the proud indif-
ference of her sex and youth, until suddenly she found
her feet caught in some trap set by a traitor, and looked
about her; and terror came and with it a wild cry for
help.
"Girls never notice danger signals," he said. "No, they
walk blindly into the very heart of catastrophe." Who
could tell what links of false and cunning evidence Boris
Waberski had been hammering away at in the dark, to
slip swiftly at the right moment over her wrist and ankle?
And with that question he was seized with a great dis-
couragement.
22


A Cry for Help
"We know very little of Criminal Procedure, even in
our own country, in this office," he said regretfully.
"Happily," said Mr. Haslitt with some tartness. With
him it was the Firm first and last. Messrs. Frobisher &
Haslitt never went in to the Criminal Courts. Litigation,
indeed, even of the purest kind was frowned upon. It is
true there was a small special staff, under the leadership
of an old managing clerk, tucked away upon an upper
floor, like an unpresentable relation in a great house,
which did a little of that kind of work. But it only did
it for hereditary clients, and then as a favour.
"However," said Mr. Haslitt as he noticed Jim's dis-
comfort, "I haven't a doubt, my boy, that you will be
equal to whatever is wanted. But remember, there's
something at the back of this which we here don't
know."
Jim shifted his position rather abruptly. This cry of
the old man was becoming parrot-like—a phrase, a for-
mula. Jim was thinking of the girl in Dijon and hearing
her piteous cry for help. She was not "snapping her
the fingers" now.
"It's a matter of common sense," Mr. Haslitt insisted.
"Take a comparison. Bath, for instance, would never
call in Scotland Yard over a case of this kind. There
would have to be the certainty of a crime first, and then
grave doubt as to who was the criminal. This is a case
for an autopsy and the doctors. If they call in this man
Hanaud"—and he stopped.
He picked the telegram up from the floor and read it
through again.
"Yes—Hanaud," he repeated, his face clouding and
growing bright and clouding again like a man catching at
and just missing a very elusive recollection. He gave up
the pursuit in the end. "Well, Jim, you had better take
the two letters of Waberski, and Ann Upcott's three-
volume novel, and Betty's telegram"—he gathered the
papers together and enclosed them in a long envelope—
"and I shall expect you back again with a smiling face in
23


The House of the Arrow
a very few days. I should like to see our little Boris when
he is asked to explain those letters."
Mr. Haslitt gave the envelope to Jim and rang his bell.
"There is some one waiting to see me, I think," he
said to the clerk who answered it.
The clerk named a great landowner, who had been kick-
ing his heels during the last half-hour in an undusted
waiting-room with a few mouldy old Law books in a
battered glass case to keep him company.
"You can show him in now," said Mr. Haslitt as Jim
retired to his own office; and when the great landowner
entered, he merely welcomed him with a reproach.
"You didn't make an appointment, did you?" he said.
But all through that interview, though his advice was
just the precise, clear advice for which the firm was
quietly famous, Mr. Haslitt's mind was still playing hide-
and-seek with a memory, catching glimpses of the fringes
of its skirt as it gleamed and vanished.
"Memory is a woman," he said to himself. "If I don't
run after her she will come of her own accord."
But he was in the common case of men with women:
he could not but run after her. Towards the end of the
interview, however, his shoulders and head moved with»a
little jerk, and he wrote a word down on a slip of paper.
As soon as his client had gone, he wrote a note and sent
it off by a messenger who had orders to wait for an
answer. The messenger returned within the hour and
Mr. Haslitt hurried to Jim Frobisher's office.
Jim had just finished handing over his affairs to various
clerks and was locking up the drawers of his desk.
"Jim, I have remembered where I have heard the name
of this man Hanaud before. You have met Julius
Ricardo? He's one of our clients."
"Yes," said Frobisher. "I remember him—a rather
finnicking person in Grosvenor Square."
"That's the man. He's a friend of Hanaud and ab-
surdly proud of the friendship. He and Hanaud were
somehow mixed up in a rather scandalous crime some
24


A Cry for Help
time ago—at Aix-les-Bains, I think. Well, Ricardo will
give you a letter of introduction to him, and tell you some-
thing about him, if you will go round to Grosvenor
Square at five this afternoon."
"Capital!" said Jim Frobisher.
He kept the appointment, and was told how he must
expect to be awed at one moment, leaped upon unpleas-
antly at the next, ridiculed at a third, and treated with
great courtesy and friendship at the fourth. Jim dis-
counted Mr. Ricardo's enthusiasm, but he got the letter
and crossed the Channel that night. On the journey it
occurred to him that if Hanaud was a man of such high
mark, he would not be free, even at an urgent call, to
pack his bags and leave for the provinces in an instant.
Jim broke his journey, therefore, at Paris, and in the
course of the morning found his way to the Direction of
the Surete on the Quai d'Horloge just behind the Palais
de Justice.
"Monsieur Hanaud?" he asked eagerly, and the porter
took his card and his letter of introduction. The great
man was still in Paris, then, he thought with relief. He
was taken to a long dark corridor, lit with electric globes
even on that bright morning of early summer. There
he rubbed elbows with malefactors and gendarmes for
half an hour whilst his confidence in himself ebbed away.
Then a bell rang and a policeman in plain clothes went
up to him. One side of the corridor was lined with a
row of doors.
"It is for you, sir," said the policeman, and he led
Frobisher to one of the doors and opened it, and
stood aside. Frobisher straightened his shoulders and
marched in.
25


chapter three: Servants of Chance
FROBISHER found himself at one end of an oblong
room. Opposite to him a couple of windows looked
across the shining river to the big Theatre du Chatelet
.
On his left hand was a great table with a few neatly
arranged piles of papers, at which a big, rather heavily-
built man was sitting. Frobisher looked at that man as
a novice in a duelling field might look at the master
swordsman whom he was committed to fight; with a little
shock of surprise that after all he appeared to be just
like other men. Hanaud, on his side, could not have
been said to have looked at Frobisher at all; yet when he
spoke it was obvious that somehow he had looked and to
very good purpose. He rose with a little bow and apolo-
gised.
"I have kept you waiting, Mr. Frobisher. My dear
friend Mr. Ricardo did not mention your object in his
letter. I had the idea that you came with the usual
wish to see something of the underworld. Now that
I see you, I recognise your wish is more serious."
Hanaud was a man of middle age with a head of
thick dark hair, and the round face and shaven chin of
a comedian. A pair of remarkably light eyes under
rather heavy lids alone gave a significance to him, at
all events when seen for the first time in a mood of good-
will. He pointed to a chair.
"Will you take a seat? I will tell you, Mr. Frobisher,
I have a very soft place in my heart for Mr. Ricardo, and
a friend of his These are words, however. What
can I do?"
Jim Frobisher laid down his hat and stick upon a side
table and took the chair in front of Hanaud's table.
"I am partner in a firm of lawyers which looks after
26


Servants of Chance
the English interests of a family in Dijon," he said, and
he saw all life and expression smoothed out of Hanaud's
face. A moment ago he had been in the company of a
genial and friendly companion; now he was looking at
a Chinaman.
"Yes?" said Hanaud.
"The family has the name of Harlowe," Jim continued.
"Oho!" said Hanaud.
The ejaculation had no surprise in it, and hardly any
interest. Jim, however, persisted.
"And the surviving member of it, a girl of twenty,
Betty Harlowe, has been charged with murder by a Rus-
sian who is connected with the family by marriage—
Boris Waberski."
"Aha!" said Hanaud. "And why do you come to me,
Mr. Frobisher?"
Jim stared at the detective. The reason of his coming
was obvious.
And yet—he was no longer sure of his ground.
Hanaud had pulled open a drawer in his table and was
beginning to put away in it one of his files.
"Yes?" he said, as who should say, "I am listening."
"Well, perhaps I am under a mistake," said Jim. "But
my firm has been informed that you, Monsieur Hanaud,
are in charge of the case," he said, and Hanaud's move-
ments were at once arrested. He sat with the file poised
on the palm of his hand as though he was weighing it,
extraordinarily still; and Jim had a swift impression that
he was more than disconcerted. Then Hanaud put the
file into the drawer and closed the drawer softly. As
softly he spoke, but in a sleek voice which to Frobisher's
ears had a note in it which was actually alarming.
"So you have been informed of that, Mr. Frobisher!
And in London! And—yes—this is only Wednesday!
News travels very quickly nowadays, to be sure! Well,
your firm has been correctly informed. I congratulate
you. The first point is scored by you."
Jim Frobisher was quick to seize upon that word. He
27


The House of the Arrow
had thought out upon his journey in what spirit he might
most usefully approach the detective. Hanaud's bitter
little remark gave him the very opening which he needed.
"But, Monsieur Hanaud, I don't take that point of
view at all," he argued earnestly. "I am happy to believe
that there is going to be no antagonism between us. For,
if there were, I should assuredly get the worst of it.
No! I am certain that the one wish you have in this
matter is to get at the truth. Whilst my wish is that
you should just look upon me as a very second-rate col-
league who by good fortune can give you a little help."
A smile flickered across Hanaud's face and restored it
to some of its geniality.
"It has always been a good rule to lay it on with a
trowel," he observed. "Now, what kind of help, Mr.
Frobisher?"
"This kind of help, Monsieur Hanaud. Two letters
from Boris Waberski demanding money, the second one
with threats. Both were received by my firm before he
brought this charge, and both of course remain un-
answered."
He took the letters from the long envelope and handed
them across the table to Hanaud, who read them through
slowly, mentally translating the phrases into French as
he read. Frobisher watched his face for some expression
of relief or satisfaction. But to his utter disappointment
no such change came; and it was with a deprecating and
almost regretful air that Hanaud turned to him in the
end.
"Yes—ao doubt these two letters have a certain im-
portance. But we mustn't exaggerate it. The case is very
difficult."
"Difficult!" cried Jim in exasperation. He seemed to
be hammering and hammering in vain against some thick
wall of stupidity. Yet this man in front of him wasn't
stupid.
"I can't understand it!" he exclaimed. "Here's the
clearest instance of blackmail that I can imagine ."
28


Servants of Chance
"Blackmail's an ugly word, Mr. Frobisher," Hanaud
warned him.
"And blackmail's an ugly thing," said Jim. "Come,
Monsieur Hanaud, Boris Waberski lives in France. You
will know something about him. You will have a dos-
sier."
Hanaud pounced upon the word with a little whoop
of delight, his face broke into smiles, he shook a fore-
finger gleefully at his visitor.
"Ah, ah, ah, ah! A dossier! Yes, I was waiting for
that word! The great legend of the dossiers! You have
that charming belief too, Mr. Frobisher. France and her
dossiers! Yes. If her coal-mines fail her, she can always
keep warm by burning her dossiers! The moment you
land for the first time at Calais—bourn! your dossier
begins, eh? You travel to Paris—so! You dine at the
Ritz Hotel—so! Afterwards you go where you ought
not to go—so-o-o! And you go back late to the hotel
very uncomfortable because you are quite sure that some-
where in the still night six little officials with black beards
and green-shaded lamps are writing it all down in your
dossier. But—wait!"
He suddenly rose from his chair with his finger to his
lips, and his eyes opened wide. Never was a man so
mysterious, so important in his mystery. He stole on tip-
toe, with a lightness of step amazing in so bulky a man,
to the door. Noiselessly and very slowly, with an alert,
bright eye cocked at Frobisher like a bird's, he turned the
handle. Then he jerked the door swiftly inwards towards
him. It was the classic detection of the eavesdropper,
seen in a hundred comedies and farces; and carried out
with so excellent a mimicry that Jim, even in this office of
the Surete, almost expected to see a flustered chamber-
maid sprawl heavily forward on her knees. He saw noth-
ing, however, but a grimy corridor lit with artificial light
in which men were patiently waiting. Hanaud closed the
door again, with an air of intense relief.
"The Prime Minister has not overheard us. We are
29


The House of the Arrow
safe," he hissed, and he crept back to Frobisher's side.
He stooped and whispered in the ear of that bewildered
man:
"I can tell you about those dossiers. They are for nine-
tenths the gossip of the concierge translated into the lan-
guage of a policeman who thinks that everybody had
better be in prison. Thus, the concierge says: 'This Mr.
Frobisher—on Tuesday he came home at one in the morn-
ing and on Thursday at three in fancy dress'; and in the
policeman's report it becomes, 'Mr. Frobisher is of a loose
and excessive life.' And that goes into your dossier—
yes, my friend, just so! But here in the Surete—never
breathe a word of it, or you ruin me!—here we are like
your Miss Betty Harlowe, 'we snap us the fingers at those
dossiers.'"
Jim Frobisher's mind was of the deliberate order. To
change from one mood to another required a progression
of ideas. He hardly knew for the moment whether he
was upon his head or his heels. A minute ago Hanaud
had been the grave agent of Justice; without a hint he
had leaped to buffoonery, and with a huge enjoyment.
He had become half urchin, half clown. Jim could almost
hear the bells of his cap still tinkling. He simply stared,
and Hanaud with a rueful smile resumed his seat.
"If we work together at Dijon, Monsieur Frobisher,"
he said with whimsical regret, "I shall not enjoy myself
as I did with my dear little friend Mr. Ricardo at Aix.
No, indeed! Had I made this little pantomime for him,
he would have sat with the eyes popping out of his head.
He would have whispered, 'The Prime Minister comes
in the morning to spy outside your door—oh!' and he
would have been thrilled to the marrow of his bones. But
you—you look at me all cold and stony, and you say to
yourself, 'This Hanaud, he is a comic!'"
"No," said Jim earnestly, and Hanaud interrupted the
protest with a laugh.
"It does not matter."
"I am glad," said Jim. "For you just now said some-
30


Servants of Chance
thing which I am very anxious you should not withdraw.
You held me out a hope that we should work together."
Hanaud leaned forward with his elbows on his desk.
"Listen," he said genially. "You have been frank and
loyal with me. So I relieve your mind. This Waberski
affair—the Prefect at Dijon does not take it very seri-
ously; neither do I here. It is, of course, a charge of
murder, and that has to be examined with care."
"Of course."
"And equally, of course, there is some little thing be-
hind it," Hanaud continued, surprising Frobisher with
the very words which Mr. Haslitt had used the day be-
fore, though the one spoke in English and the other in
French. "As a lawyer you will know that. Some little
unpleasant fact which is best kept to ourselves. But it is
a simple affair, and with these two letters you have
brought me, simpler than ever. We shall ask Waberski
to explain these letters and some other things too, if he
can. He is a type, that Boris Waberski! The body of
Madame Harlowe will be exhumed to-day and the evi-
dence of the doctors taken, and afterwards, no doubt,
the case will be dismissed and you can deal with Waberski
as you please."
"And that little secret?" asked Jim.
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
"No doubt it will come to light. But what does that
matter if it only comes to light in the office of the exam-
ining magistrate, and does not pass beyond the door?"
"Nothing at all," Jim agreed.
"You will see. We are not so alarming after all, and
your little client can put her pretty head upon the pillow
without any fear that an injustice will be done to her."
"Thank you, Monsieur Hanaud!" Jim Frobisher cried
warmly. He was conscious of so great a relief that he
himself was surprised by it. He had been quite captured
by his pity for that unknown girl in the big house, set
upon by a crazy rascal and with no champion but another
girl of her own years. "Yes, this is good news to me."
31


The House of the Arrow
But he had hardly finished speaking before a doubt
crept into his mind as to the sincerity of the man sitting
opposite to him. Jim did not mean to be played and
landed like a silly fish, however inexperienced he might
be. He looked at Hanaud and wondered. Was this pres-
ent geniality of his any less assumed than his other
moods? Jim was unsettled in his estimate of the detec-
tive. One moment a judge, and rather implacable, now
an urchin, now a friend! Which was travesty and which
truth? Luckily there was a test question which Mr.
Haslitt had put only yesterday as he looked out from the
window across Russell Square. Jim now repeated it.
"The affair is simple, you say?"
"Of the simplest."
"Then how comes it, Monsieur Hanaud, that the exam-
ining judge at Dijon still finds it necessary to call in to
his assistance one of the chiefs of the Surete of Paris?"
The question was obviously expected, and no less ob-
viously difficult to answer. Hanaud nodded his head once
or twice.
"Yes," he said, and again "Yes," like a man in doubt.
He looked at Jim with appraising eyes. Then with a
rush, "I shall tell you everything, and when I have told
you, you will give me your word that you will not betray
my confidence to any one in this world. For this is
serious."
Jim could not doubt Hanaud's sincerity at this moment,
nor his friendliness. They shone in the man like a strong
flame.
"I give you my word now," he said, and he reached out
his hand across the table. Hanaud shook it. "I can talk
to you freely, then," he answered, and he produced a little
blue bundle of very black cigarettes. "You shall smoke."
The two men lit their cigarettes and through the blue
cloud Hanaud explained:
"I go really to Dijon on quite another matter. This
Waberski affair, it is a pretence! The examining judge
who calls me in—see, now, you have a phrase for him,"
32


Servants of Chance
and Hanaud proudly dropped into English more or less.
"He excuse his face! Yes, that is your expressive idiom.
He excuse his face, and you will see, my friend, that it
needs a lot of excusing, that face of his, yes. Now listen!
I get hot when I think of that examining judge."
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and, set-
ting his sentence in order, resumed in French.
"The little towns, my friend, where life is not very
gay and people have the time to be interested in the affairs
of their neighbours, have their own crimes, and perhaps
the most pernicious of them all is the crime of anonymous
letters. Suddenly out of a clear sky they will come like
a pestilence, full of vile charges difficult to refute and
—who knows?—sometimes perhaps true. For a while
these abominations flow into the letter-boxes and not a
word is said. If money is demanded, money is paid. If
it is only sheer wickedness which drives that unknown
pen, those who are lashed by it none the less hold their
tongues. But each one begins to suspect his neighbour.
The social life of the town is poisoned. A great canopy
of terror hangs over it, until the postman's knock, a thing
so welcome in the sane life of every day, becomes a thing
to shiver at, and in the end dreadful things happen."
So grave and quiet was the tone which Hanaud used
that Jim himself shivered, even in this room whence he
could see the sunlight sparkling on the river and hear
the pleasant murmur of the Paris streets. Above that
murmur he heard the sharp knock of the postman upon
the door. He saw a white face grow whiter and still
eyes grow haggard with despair.
"Such a plague has descended upon Dijon," Hanaud
continued. "For more than a year it has raged. The
police would not apply to Paris for help. No, they did
not need help, they would solve this pretty problem for
themselves. Yes, but the letters go on and the citizens
complain. The police say, 'Hush! The examining
magistrate, he has a clue. Give him time!' But the
letters still go on. Then after a year comes this godsend
33


Servants of Chance
sentence. No, there were only the two errors which he
had noticed at once. But what errors they were! To
any one, at all events, with eyes to see and some luck in
the matter of experience. Why, they limited the area of
search at once!
"Monsieur Hanaud, I can give you some more help,"
he cried enthusiastically. He did not notice the broad
grin of delight which suddenly transfigured the detective's
face. "Help which may lead you very quickly to the
writer of these letters."
"You can?" Hanaud exclaimed. "Give it to me, my
young friend. Do not keep me shaking in excitement.
And do not—oh! do not tell me that you have discovered
that the letters were typed upon a Corona machine. For
that we know already."
Jim Frobisher flushed scarlet. That is just what he
had noticed with so much pride in his perspicuity. Where
the text of a sentence required a capital D, there were in-
stead the two noughts with the diagonal line separating
them (thus, %), which are the symbol of "per cent.";
and where there should have been a capital S lower down
the page, there was the capital S with the transverse lines
which stands for dollars. Jim was familiar with the
Corona machine himself, and he had remembered that if
one used by error the stop for figures, instead of the stop
for capital letters, those two mistakes would result. He
realised now, with Hanaud's delighted face in front of
him—Hanaud was the urchin now—that the Surete was
certain not to have overlooked those two indications even
if the magistrate at Dijon had; and in a moment he began
to laugh too.
"Well, I fairly asked for it, didn't I?" he said as he
handed the letter back. "I said a wise thing to you,
Monsieur, when I held it fortunate that we were not to be
on opposite sides."
Hanaud's face lost its urchin look.
"Don't make too much of me, my friend, lest you be
disappointed," he said in all seriousness. "We are the
35


The House of the Arrow
servants of Chance, the very best of us. Our skill is to
seize quickly the hem of her skirt, when it flashes for the
fraction of a second before our eyes."
He replaced the two anonymous letters in the green
cover and laid it again in the drawer. Then he gath-
ered together the two letters which Boris Waberski had
written and gave them back to Jim Frobisher.
"You will want these to produce at Dijon. You will
go there to-day?"
"This afternoon."
"Good!" said Hanaud. "I shall take the night ex-
press."
"I can wait for that," said Jim. But Hanaud shook
his head.
"It is better that we should not go together, nor stay
at the same hotel. It will very quickly be known in Dijon
that you are the English lawyer of Miss Harlowe, and
those in your company will be marked men too. By the
way, how were you informed in London that I, Hanaud,
had been put in charge of this case?"
"We had a telegram," replied Jim.
"Yes? And from whom? I am curious!"
"From Miss Harlowe."
For a moment Hanaud was for the second time in that
interview quite disconcerted. Of that Jim Frobisher
could have no doubt. He sat for so long a time, his ciga-
rette half-way to his lips, a man turned into stone. Then
he laughed rather bitterly, with his eyes alertly turned on
Jim.
"Do you know what I am doing, Monsieur Fro-
bisher?" he asked. "I am putting to myself a riddle.
Answer it if you can! What is the strongest passion in
the world? Avarice? Love? Hatred? None of these
things. It is the passion of one public official to take a
great big club and hit his brother official on the back of
the head. It is arranged that I shall go secretly to Dijon
so that I may have some little chance of success. Good!
On Saturday it is so arranged, and already on Monday
36


Servants of Chance
my colleagues have so spread the news that Miss Harlowe
can telegraph it to you on Tuesday morning. But that is
kind, eh? May I please see the telegram?"
Frobisher took it from the long envelope and handed it
to Hanaud, who received it with a curious eagerness and
opened it out on the table in front of them. He read it
very slowly, so slowly that Jim wondered whether he too
heard through the lines of the telegram, as through the
receiver of a telephone, the same piteous cry for help
which he himself had heard. Indeed, when Hanaud
raised his face all the bitterness had gone from it.
"The poor little girl, she is afraid now, eh? The
slender fingers, they do not snap themselves any longer,
eh? Well, in a few days we make all right for her."
"Yes," said Jim stoutly.
"Meanwhile I tear this, do I not?" and Hanaud held
up the telegraph form. "It mentions my name. It will
be safe with you, no doubt, but it serves no purpose.
Everything which is torn up here is burnt in the evening.
It is for you to say," and he dangled the telegram before
Jim Frobisher's eyes.
"By all means," said Jim, and Hanaud tore the tele-
gram across. Then he placed the torn pieces together and
tore them through once again and dropped them into his
waste-paper basket. "So! That is done!" he said.
"Now tell me! There is another young English girl in
the Maison Grenelle."
"Ann Upcott," said Jim with a nod.
"Yes, tell me about her."
Jim made the same reply to Hanaud which he had made
to Mr. Haslitt.
"I have never seen her in my life. I never heard of her
until yesterday."
But whereas Mr. Haslitt had received the answer with
amazement, Hanaud accepted it without comment.
"Then we shall both make the acquaintance of that
young lady at Dijon," he said with a smile, and he rose
from his chair.
37


The House of the Arrow
screen and at the edge near the billiard-room. Don't look
for me when the lights are raised, and if I am talking to
any one else, you will avoid me like poison. Is that under-
stood?"
"Quite," Jim returned.
"And you have now two secrets of mine to keep."
Hanaud's face lost its smile. In some strange way it
seemed to sharpen, the light-coloured eyes became very
still and grave. "That also is understood, Monsieur Fro-
bisher,".he said. "For I begin to think that we may both
of us see strange things before we leave Dijon again for
Paris."
The moment of gravity passed. With a bow he held
open the door. But Jim Frobisher, as he passed out into
the corridor, was once again convinced that at some defi-
nite point in the interview Hanaud had at all events
caught a glimpse of the flickering skirts of Chance, even
if he had not grasped them in his hands.
40


chapter four: Betty Harlowe
JIM FROBISHER reached Dijon that night at an hour
too late for any visit, but at half-past nine on the next
morning he turned with a thrill of excitement into the
little street of Charles-Robert. This street was bordered
upon one side, throughout its length, by a high garden
wall above which great sycamores and chestnut trees
rustled friendlily in a stir of wind. Towards the farther
mouth of the street the wall was broken, first by the end of
a house with a florid observation-window of the Renais-
sance period which overhung the footway; and again a
little farther on by a pair of elaborate tall iron gates. Be-
fore these gates Jim came to a standstill. He gazed into
the courtyard of the Maison Grenelle, and as he gazed
his excitement died away and he felt a trifle ashamed of
it. There seemed so little cause for excitement.
It was a hot, quiet, cloudless morning. On the left-
hand side of the court women-servants were busy in front
of a row of offices; at the end Jim caught glimpses of a
chauffeur moving between a couple of cars in a garage,
and heard him whistling gaily as he moved; on the right
stretched the big house, its steep slate roof marked out
gaily with huge diamond patterns of bright yellow, taking
in the sunlight through all its open windows. The hall
door under the horizontal glass fan stood open. One
of the iron gates, too, was ajar. Even the sergent-de-ville
in his white trousers out in the small street here seemed
to be sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the high
wall rather than exercising any real vigilance. It was im-
possible to believe, with all this pleasant evidence of
normal life, that any threat was on that house or upon
any of its inhabitants.
41


The House of the Arrow
"And indeed there is no threat," Jim reflected. "I
have Hanaud's word for it."
He pushed the gate open and crossed to the front door.
An old serving-man informed him that Mademoiselle
Harlowe did not receive, but he took Jim's card neverthe-
less, and knocked upon a door on the right of the big
square hall. As he knocked, he opened the door; and
from his position in the hall Jim looked right through a
library to a window at the end and saw two figures sil-
houetted against the window, a man and a girl. The man
was protesting, rather extravagantly both in word and
gesture, to Jim's Britannic mind, the girl laughing—a
clear, ringing laugh, with just a touch of cruelty, at the
man's protestations. Jim even caught a word or two of
the protest spoken in French, but with a curiously metallic
accent.
"I have been your slave too long," the man cried, and
the girl became aware that the door was open and that
the old man stood inside of it with a card upon a silver
salver. She came quickly forward and took the card.
Jim heard the cry of pleasure, and the girl came running
out into the hall.
"You!" she exclaimed, her eyes shining. "I had no
right to expect you so soon. Oh, thank you!" and she
gave him both her hands.
■ Jim did not need her words to recognise in her the
"little girl" of Mr. Haslitt's description. Little in actual
height Betty Harlowe certainly was not, but she was such
a slender trifle of a girl that the epithet seemed in place.
Her hair was dark brown in colour, with a hint of copper
where the light caught it, parted on one side and very
neatly dressed about her small head. The broad fore-
head and oval face were of a clear pallor and made vivid
the fresh scarlet of her lips; and the large pupils of her
grey eyes gave to her a look which was at once haunting
and wistful. As she held out her hands in a warm grati-
tude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of
delicate flame and fragile as fair china. She looked him
42


The House of the Arrow
detected the glance. She closed the door and turned back
to Jim with a friendly little grimace which somehow put
him in a good humour. He was being compared to an-
other man to his advantage, and however modest one may
be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant warmth.
"More trouble, Miss Harlowe," he said with a smile,
"but this time the sort of trouble which you must expect
for a good many years to come."
He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two
side windows which looked out upon the courtyard.
Betty sat down in the window-seat.
"I really ought to be grateful to him," she said, "for
he made me laugh. And it seems to me ages since I
laughed"; she looked out of the window and her eyes
suddenly filled with tears.
"Oh! don't, please," cried Jim in a voice of trouble.
The smile trembled once more on Betty's lips de-
liriously.
"I won't," she replied.
"I was so glad to hear you laugh," he continued, "after
your unhappy telegram to my partner and before I told
you my good news."
Betty looked up at him eagerly.
"Good news?"
Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope
the two letters which Waberski had sent to his firm and
handed them to Betty.
"Read them," he said, "and notice the dates."
Betty glanced at the handwriting.
"From Monsieur Boris," she cried, and she settled
down in the window-seat to study them. In her short
black frock with her slim legs in their black silk stockings
extended and her feet crossed, and her head and white
neck bent over the sheets of Waberski's letters, she looked
to Jim like a girl fresh from school. She was quick
enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters.
"Of course I always knew that it was money that
Monsieur Boris wanted," she said. "And when my
44


Betty Harlowe
aunt's will was read and I found that everything had
been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you and
make some arrangement for him."
"There was no obligation upon you," Jim protested.
"He wasn't really a relation at all. He married Mrs.
Harlowe's sister, that's all."
"I know," replied Betty, and she laughed. "He al-
ways objected to me because I would call him 'Monsieur
Boris' instead of 'uncle.' But I meant to do something
nevertheless. Only he gave me no time. He bullied me
first of all, and I do hate being bullied—don't you, Mr.
Frobisher?"
"I do."
Betty looked at the letters again.
"That's when I snapped me the fingers at him, I sup-
pose," she continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the
phrase. "Afterwards he brought this horrible charge
against me, and to have suggested any arrangement would
have been to plead guilty."
"You were quite right. It would indeed," Jim agreed
cordially.
Up to this moment, a suspicion had been lurking at the
back of Jim Frobisher's mind that this girl had been a
trifle hard in her treatment of Boris Waberski. He was
a sponger, a wastrel, with no real claim upon her, it was
true. On the other hand, he had no means of livelihood,
and Mrs. Harlowe, from whom Betty drew her fortune,
had been content to endure and support him. Now, how-
ever, the suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the
girl removed and by her own frankness.
"Then it is all over," Betty said, handing back the let-
ters to Jim with a sigh of relief. Then she smiled rue-
fully—"But just for a little while I was really fright-
ened," she confessed. "You see, I was sent for and ques-
tioned by the examining magistrate. Oh! I wasn't
frightened by the questions, but by him, the man. I've
no doubt it's his business to look severe, but I couldn't
help thinking that if any one looked as terrifically severe
45


The House of the Arrow
as he did, it must be because he hadn't any brains and
wanted you not to know. And people without brains are
always dangerous, aren't they?"
"Yes, that wasn't encouraging," Jim agreed.
"Then he forbade me to use a motor-car, as if he ex-
pected me to run away. And to crown everything, when
I came away from the Palais de Justice, I met some
friends outside who gave me a long list of people who
had been condemned and only found to be innocent when
it was too late."
Jim stared at her.
"The brutes!" he cried.
"Well, we have all got friends like that," Betty returned
philosophically. "Mine, however, were particularly
odious. For they actually discussed, as a reason of
course, why I should engage the very best advocate,
whether, since Mrs. Harlowe had adopted me, the charge
couldn't be made one of matricide. In which case there
could be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with
a black veil over my head and naked feet." She saw hor-
ror and indignation in Jim Frobisher's face and she
reached out a hand to him.
"Yes. Malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt,
though"—and she lifted a slim foot in a shining slipper
and contemplated it whimsically—"I don't imagine that,
given the circumstances, I should be bothering my head
much as to whether I was wearing my best shoes and
stockings or none at all."
"I never heard of so abominable a suggestion," cried
Jim.
"You can imagine, at all events, that I came home a
little rattled," continued Betty, "and why I sent off that
silly panicky telegram. I would have recalled it when I
rose to the surface again. But it was then too late. The
telegram had"
She broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflexion and
a sharp indraw of her breath.
"Who is that?" she asked in a changed voice. She
46


Betty Harlowe
had been speaking quietly and slowly, with an almost
humorous appreciation of the causes of her fear. Now
her question was uttered quickly and anxiety was pre-
dominant in her voice. "Yes, who is that?" she repeated.
A big, heavily built man sauntering past the great iron
gates had suddenly whipped into the courtyard. A frac-
tion of a second before he was an idler strolling along
the path, now he was already disappearing under the big
glass fan of the porch.
"It's Hanaud," Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet
as though a spring in her had been released, and stood
swaying.
"You have nothing to fear from Hanaud," Jim Fro-
bisher reassured her. "I have shown him those two let-
ters of Waberski. From first to last he is your friend.
Listen. This is what he said to me only yesterday in
Paris."
"Yesterday, in Paris?" Betty asked suddenly.
"Yes, I called upon him at the Surete. These were
his words. I remembered them particularly so that I
could repeat them to you just as they were spoken. Your
little client can lay her pretty head upon her pillow con-
fident that no injustice will be done to her.'"
The bell of the front door shrilled through the house
as Jim finished.
"Then why is he in Dijon? Why is he at the door
now?" Betty asked stubbornly.
But that was the one question which Jim must not
answer. He had received a confidence from Hanaud.
He had pledged his word not to betray it. For a little
while longer Betty must believe that Waberski's accusa-
tion against her was the true reason of Hanaud's presence
in Dijon, and not merely an excuse for it.
"Hanaud acts under orders," Jim returned. "He is
here because he was bidden to come"; and to his relief
the answer sufficed. In truth, Betty's thoughts were di-
verted to some problem to which he had not the key.
"So you called upon Monsieur Hanaud in Paris," she
47


The House of the Arrow
said, with a warm smile. "You have forgotten nothing
which could help me." She laid a hand upon the sill of
the open window. "I hope that he felt all the flattery
of my panic-stricken telegram to London."
"He was simply regretful that you should have been
so distressed."
"So you showed him the telegram?"
"And he destroyed it. It was my excuse for calling
upon him with the letters."
Betty sat down again on the window-seat and lifted a
finger for silence. Outside the door voices were speaking.
Then the door was opened and the old man-servant en-
tered. He carried this time no card upon a salver, but
he was obviously impressed and a trifle flustered.
"Mademoiselle," he began, and Betty interrupted him.
All trace of anxiety had gone from her manner. She
was once more mistress of herself.
"I know, Gaston. Show Monsieur Hanaud in at
once."
But Monsieur Hanaud was already in. He bowed
with a pleasant ceremony to Betty Harlowe and shook
hands cordially with Jim Frobisher.
"I was delighted as I came through the court, Made-
moiselle, to see that my friend here was already with you.
For he will have told you that I am not, after all, the ogre
of the fairy-books."
"But you never looked up at the windows once," cried
Betty in perplexity.
Hanaud smiled gaily.
"Mademoiselle, it is in the technique of my trade never
to look up at windows and yet to know what is going on
behind them. With your permission?" And he laid his
hat and cane upon a big writing-table in the middle of the
room.
48


chapter five: Betty Harlowe Answers
BUT we cannot see even through the widest of win-
dows," Hanaud continued, "what happened behind
them a fortnight ago. In those cases, Mademoiselle, we
have to make ourselves the nuisance and ask the ques-
tions."
"I am ready to answer you," returned Betty quietly.
"Oh, of that—not a doubt," Hanaud cried genially.
"Is it permitted to me to seat myself? Yes?"
Betty jumped up, the pallor of her face flushed to pink.
"I beg your pardon. Of course, Monsieur Hanaud."
That little omission in her manners alone showed Jim
Frobisher that she was nervous. But for it, he would
have credited her with a self-command almost unnatural
in her years.
"It is nothing," said Hanaud with a smile. "After all,
we are—the gentlest of us—disturbing guests." He took
a chair from the side of the table and drew it up close so
that he faced Betty. But whatever advantage was to be
gained from the positions he yielded to her. For the
light from the window fell in all its morning strength
upon his face, whilst hers was turned to the interior of
the room.
"So!" he said as he sat down. "Mademoiselle, I will
first give you a plan of our simple procedure, as at present
I see it. The body of Madame Harlowe was exhumed
the night before last in the presence of your notary."
Betty moved suddenly with a little shiver of revolt.
"I know," he continued quickly. "These necessities
are distressing. But we do Madame Harlowe no hurt,
and we have to think of the living one, you, Miss Betty
Harlowe, and make sure that no suspicion shall rest upon
you—no, not even amongst your most loyal friends.
49


The House of the Arrow
Isn't that so? Well, next, I put my questions to you
here. Then we wait for the analyst's report. Then the
Examining Magistrate will no doubt make you his com-
pliments, and I, Hanaud, will, if I am lucky, carry back
with me to that dull Paris, a signed portrait of the beau-
tiful Miss Harlowe against my heart."
"And that will be all?" cried Betty, clasping her hands
together in her gratitude.
"For you, Mademoiselle, yes. But for our little Boris
—no!" Hanaud grinned with a mischievous anticipation.
"I look forward to half an hour with that broken-kneed
one. I shall talk to him and I shall not be dignified—no,
not at all. I shall take care, too, that my good friend
Monsieur Frobisher is not present. He would take from
me all my enjoyment. He would look at me all prim like
my maiden aunt and he would say to himself, 'Shocking!
Oh, that comic! What a fellow! He is not proper.'
No, and I shall not be proper. But, on the other hand, I
will laugh all the way from Dijon to Paris."
Monsieur Hanaud had indeed begun to laugh already
and Betty suddenly joined in with him. Hers was a
clear, ringing laugh of enjoyment, and Jim fancied him-
self once more in the hall hearing that laughter come
pealing through the open door.
"Ah, that is good!" exclaimed Hanaud. "You can
laugh, Mademoiselle, even at my foolishnesses. You must
keep Monsieur Frobisher here in Dijon and not let him
return to London until he too has learnt that divinest of
the arts."
Hanaud hitched his chair a little nearer, and a most
uncomfortable image sprang at once into Jim Frobisher's
mind. Just so, with light words and little jokes squeezed
out to tenuity, djd doctors hitch up their chairs to the
bedsides of patients in a dangerous case. It took quite a
few minutes of Hanaud's questions before that image
entirely vanished from his thoughts.
"Good!" said Hanaud. "Now let us to business and
get the facts all clear and ordered!"
50


Betty Harlowe Answers
"Yes," Jim agreed, and he too hitched his chair a little
closer. It was curious, he reflected, how little he did
know of the actual facts of the case.
"Now tell me, Mademoiselle! Madame Harlowe died,
so far as we know, quite peacefully in her bed during the
night."
"Yes," replied Betty.
"During the night of April the 27th?"
"Yes."
"She slept alone in her room that night?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"That was her rule?"
"Yes."
"I understand Madame Harlowe's heart had given her
trouble for some time."
"She had been an invalid for three years."
"And there was a trained nurse always in the
house?"
"Yes."
Hanaud nodded.
"Now tell me, Mademoiselle, where did this nurse
sleep? Next door to Madame?"
"No. A bedroom had been fitted up for her on the
same floor but at the end of the passage."
"And how far away was this bedroom?"
"There were two rooms separating it from my
aunt's."
"Large rooms?"
"Yes," Betty explained. "These rooms are on the
ground-floor, and are what you would call reception-
rooms. But, since Madame's heart made the stairs dan-
gerous for her, some of them were fitted up especially for
her use."
"Yes, I see," said Hanaud. "Two big reception-rooms
between, eh? And the walls of the house are thick. It is
not difficult to see that it was not built in these days. I
ask you this, Mademoiselle. Would a cry from Madame
51


The House of the Arrow
Harlowe at night, when all the house was silent, be heard
in the nurse's room?"
"I am very sure that it would not," Betty returned.
"But there was a bell by Madame's bed which rang in
the nurse's room. She had hardly to lift her arm to press
the button."
"Ah!" said Hanaud. "A bell specially fitted up?"
"Yes."
"And the button within reach of the fingers. Yes.
That is all very well, if one does not faint, Mademoiselle.
But suppose one does! Then the bell is not very useful.
Was there no room nearer which could have been set
aside for the nurse?"
"There was one next to my aunt's room, Monsieur
Hanaud, with a communicating door."
Hanaud was puzzled and sat back in his chair. Jim
Frobisher thought the time had come for him to interpose.
He had been growing more and more restless as the cate-
chism progressed. He could not see any reason why
Betty, however readily and easily she answered, should
be needlessly pestered.
"Surely, Monsieur Hanaud," he said, "it would save a
deal of time if we paid a visit to these rooms and saw
them for ourselves."
Hanaud swung round like a thing on a swivel. Ad-
miration beamed in his eyes. He gazed at his junior col-
league in wonder.
"But what an idea!" he cried enthusiastically. "What
a fine idea! How ingenious! How difficult to conceive!
And it is you, Monsieur Frobisher, who have thought of
it! I make you my distinguished compliments!" Then
all his enthusiasm declined into lassitude. "But what a
pity!"
Hanaud waited intently for Jim to ask for an explana-
tion of that sigh, but Jim simply got red in the face and
refused to oblige. He had obviously made an asinine
suggestion and was being rallied for it in front of the
beautiful Betty Harlowe, who looked to him for her salva-
52


Betty Harlowe Answers
tion; and on the whole he thought Hanaud to be a rather
insufferable person as he sat there brightly watching for
some second inanity. Hanaud in the end had to explain.
"We should have visited those rooms before now, Mon-
sieur Frobisher. But the Commissaire of Police has
sealed them up and without his presence we must not
break the seals."
An almost imperceptible movement was made by Betty
Harlowe in the window; an almost imperceptible smile
flickered for the space of a lightning-flash upon her lips;
and Jim saw Hanaud stiffen like a watch-dog when he
hears a sound at night.
"You are amused, Mademoiselle?" he asked sharply.
"On the contrary, Monsieur."
And the smile reappeared upon her face and was seen
to be what it was, pure wistfulness. "I had a hope those
great seals with their linen bands across the doors were
all now to be removed. It is fanciful, no doubt, but I
have a horror of them. They seem to me like an interdict
upon the house."
Hanaud's manner changed in an instant.
"That I can very well understand, Mademoiselle," he
said, "and I will make it my business to see that those
seals are broken. Indeed, there was no great use in affix-
ing them, since they were only affixed when the charge
was brought and ten days after Madame Harlowe died."
He turned to Jim. "But we in France are all tied up in
red tape, too. However, the question at which I am
driving does not depend upon any aspect of the rooms. It
is this, Mademoiselle," and he turned back to Betty.
"Madame Harlowe was an invalid with a nurse in con-
stant attendance. How is it that the nurse did not sleep
in that suitable room with the communicating-door?
Why must she be where she could hear no cry, no sudden
call?"
Betty nodded her head. Here was a question which
demanded an answer. She leaned forward, choosing her
words with care.
53


The House of the Arrow
"Yes, but for that, Monsieur, you must understand
something of Madame my aunt and put yourself for a
moment in her place. She would have it so. She was, as
you say, an invalid. For three years she had not gone
beyond the garden except in a private saloon once a year
to Monte Carlo. But she would not admit her malady.
No, she was in her mind strong and a fighter. She was
going to get well, it was always a question of a few weeks
with her, and a nurse in her uniform always near with
the door open, as though she were in the last stages of
illness—that distressed her." Betty paused and went on
again. "Of course, when she had some critical attack,
the nurse was moved. I myself gave the order. But as
soon as the attack subsided, the nurse must go. Madame
would not endure it."
Jim understood that speech. Its very sincerity gave
him a glimpse of the dead woman, made him appreciate
her tough vitality. She would not give in. She did not
want the paraphernalia of malady always about her. No,
she would sleep in her own room, and by herself, like
other women of her age. Yes, Jim understood that and
believed every word that Betty spoke. Only—only—she
was keeping something back. It was that which troubled
him. What she said was true, but there was more to be
said. There had been hesitation in Betty's speech, too
nice a choice of words and then suddenly a little rush of
phrases to cover up the hesitations. He looked at Ha-
naud, who was sitting without a movement and with his
eyes fixed upon Betty's face, demanding more from her
by his very impassivity. They were both, Jim felt sure,
upon the edge of that little secret which, according to
Haslitt as to Hanaud was always at the back of such wild
charges as Waberski brought—the little shameful family
secret which must be buried deep from the world's eyes.
And while Jim was pondering upon this explanation of
Betty's manner, he was suddenly startled out of his wits
by a passionate cry which broke from her lips.
"Why do you look at me like that?" she cried to Ha-
54


Betty Harlowe Answers
naud, her eyes suddenly ablaze in her white face and her
lips shaking. Her voice rose to a challenge.
"Do you disbelieve me, Monsieur Hanaud?"
Hanaud raised his hands in protest. He leaned back
in his chair. The vigilance of his eyes, of his whole atti-
tude, was relaxed.
"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle," he said with a
good deal of self-reproach. "I do not disbelieve you. I
was listening with both my ears to what you said, so that
I might never again have to trouble you with my ques-
tions. But I should have remembered, what I forgot,
that for a number of days you have been living under a
heavy strain. My manner was at fault."
The small tornado of passion passed. Betty sank back
in the corner of the window-seat, her head resting against
the side of the sash and her face a little upturned.
"You are really very considerate, Monsieur Hanaud,"
she returned. "It is I who should beg your pardon. For
I was behaving like a hysterical schoolgirl. Will you go
on with your questions?"
"Yes," Hanaud replied gently. "It is better that we
finish with them now. Let us come back to the night of
the twenty-seventh!"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"Madame was in her usual health that night—neither
better nor worse."
"If anything a little better," returned Betty.
"So that you did not hesitate to go on that evening to a
Idance given by some friends of yours?"
Jim started. So Betty was actually out of the house
on that fatal night. Here was a new point in her favour.
"A dance!" he cried, and Hanaud lifted his hand.
"If you please, Monsieur Frobisher!" he said. "Let
Mademoiselle speak!"
"I did not hesitate," Betty explained. "The life of the
household had to go on normally. It would never have
done for me to do unusual things. Madame was quick
to notice. I think that although she would not admit
55


The House of the Arrow
that she was dangerously ill, at the bottom of her mind
she suspected that she was; and one had to be careful not
to alarm her."
"By such acts, for instance, as staying away from a
dance to which she knew that you had meant to go?" said
Hanaud. "Yes, Mademoiselle. I quite understand that."
He cocked his head at Jim Frobisher, and added with
a smile, "Ah, you did not know that, Monsieur Fro-
bisher. No, nor our friend Boris Waberski, I think. Or
he would hardly have rushed to the Prefect of Police in
such a hurry. Yes, Mademoiselle was dancing with her
friends on this night when she is supposed to be commit-
ting the most monstrous of crimes. By the way, Made-
moiselle, where was Boris Waberski on the night of the
27th?"
"He was away," returned Betty. "He went away on
the 25th to fish for trout at a village on the River Ouche,
and he did not come back until the morning of the 28th."
"Exactly," said Hanaud. "What a type that fellow!
Let us hope he had a better landing-net for his trout than
the one he prepared so hastily for Mademoiselle Harlowe.
Otherwise his three days' sport cannot have amounted to
much."
His laugh and his words called up a faint smile upon
Betty's face and then he swept back to his questions.
"So you went to a dance, Mademoiselle. Where?"
"At the house of Monsieur de Pouillac on the Boule-
vard Thiers."
"And at what hour did you go?"
"I left this house at five minutes to nine."
"You are sure of the hour?"
"Quite," said Betty.
"Did you see Madame Harlowe before you went?"
"Yes," Betty answered. "I went to her room just be-
fore I left. She took her dinner in bed, as she often did.
I was wearing for the dance a new frock which I had
bought this winter at Monte Carlo, and I went to her
room to show her how I looked in it."
56


Betty Harlowe Answers
"Was Madame alone?"
"No; the nurse was with her."
And upon that Hanaud smiled with a great appearance
of cunning.
"I knew that, Mademoiselle," he declared with a
friendly grin. "See, I set a little trap for you. For I
have here the evidence of the nurse herself, Jeanne
Baudin."
He took out from his pocket a sheet of paper upon
which a paragraph was typed. "Yes, the examining mag-
istrate sent for her and took her statement."
"I didn't know that," said Betty. "Jeanne left us the
day of the funeral and went home. I have not seen her
since."
She nodded at Hanaud once or twice with a little smile
of appreciation.
"I would not like to be a person with a secret to hide
from you, Monsieur Hanaud," she said admiringly. "I
do not think that I should be able to hide it for long."
Hanaud expanded under the flattery like a novice, and,
to Jim Frobisher's thinking, rather like a very vulgar
novice.
"You are wise, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed. "For,
after all, I am Hanaud. There is only one," and he
thumped his chest and beamed delightedly. "Heavens,
these are politenesses! Let us get on. This is what the
nurse declared," and he read aloud from his sheet of
paper:
"Mademoiselle came to the bedroom, so that Madame
might admire her in her new frock of silver tissue and
her silver slippers. Mademoiselle arranged the pillows
and saw that Madame had her favourite books and her
drink beside the bed. Then she wished her good night,
and with her pretty frock rustling and gleaming, she
tripped out of the room. As soon as the door was closed,
Madame said to me "and Hanaud broke off abruptly.
"But that does not matter," he said in a hurry.
Suddenly and sharply Betty leaned forward.
57


The House of the Arrow
"Does it not, Monsieur?" she asked, her eyes fixed
upon his face, and the blood mounting slowly into her
pale cheeks.
"No," said Hanaud, and he began to fold the sheet
of paper.
"What does the nurse report that Madame said to her
about me, as soon as the door was closed?" Betty asked,
measuring out her words with a slow insistence. "Come,
Monsieur! I have a right to know," and she held out
her hand for the paper.
"You shall judge for yourself that it was of no im-
portance," said Hanaud. "Listen!" and once more he
read*.
"Madame said to me, looking at her clock, 'It is well
that Mademoiselle has gone early. For Dijon is not
Paris, and unless you go in time there are no partners
for you to dance with.' It was then ten minutes to nine."
With a smile Hanaud gave the paper into Betty's hand;
and she bent her head over it swiftly, as though she
doubted whether what he had recited was really written
on that sheet, as if she rather trembled to think what
Mrs. Harlowe had said of her after she had gone from
the room. She took only a second or two to glance over
the page, but when she handed it back to him, her manner
was quite changed.
"Thank you," she said with a note of bitterness, and
her deep eyes gleamed with resentment. Jim understood
the change and sympathised with it. Hanaud had spoken
of setting a trap when he had set none. For there was no
conceivable reason why she should hesitate to admit that
she had seen Mrs. Harlowe in the presence of the nurse,
and wished her good night before she went to the party.
But he had set a real trap a minute afterwards and into
that Betty had straightway stumbled. He had tricked
her into admitting a dread that Mrs. Harlowe might have
spoken of her in disparagement or even in horror after
she had left the bedroom.
"You must know, Monsieur Hanaud," she explained
58


Betty Harlowe Answers
very coldly, "that women are not always very generous
to one another, and sometimes have not the imagination
—how shall I put it?—to visualise the possible conse-
quences of things they may say with merely the inten-
tion to hurt and do a little harm. Jeanne Baudin and I
were, so far as I ever knew, good friends, but one is never
sure, and when you folded up her statement in a hurry I
was naturally very anxious to hear the rest of it."
"Yes, I agree," Jim intervened. "It did look as if the
nurse might have added something malevolent, which
could neither be proved nor disproved."
"It was a misunderstanding, Mademoiselle," Hanaud
replied in a voice of apology. "We will take care that
there shall not be any other." He looked over the nurse's
statement again.
"It is said here that you saw that Madame had her
favourite books and her drink beside the bed. That is
true."
"Yes, Monsieur."
"What was that drink?"
"A glass of lemonade."
"It was placed on a table, I suppose, ready for her every
night?"
"Every night."
"And there was no narcotic dissolved in it?"
"None," Betty replied. "If Mrs. Harlowe was rest-
less, the nurse would give an opium pill and very occa-
sionally a slight injection of morphia."
"But that was not done on this night?"
"Not to my knowledge. If it was done, it was done
after my departure."
"Very well," said Hanaud, and he folded the paper
and put it away in his pocket. "That is finished with.
We have you now out of the house at five minutes to nine
in the evening, and Madame in her bed with her health
no worse than usual."
"Yes."
"Good!" Hanaud changed his attitude. "Now let us
59


The House of the Arrow
go over your evening, Mademoiselle! I take it that you
stayed at the house of M. de Pouillac until you returned
home."
"Yes."
"You remember with whom you danced? If it was
necessary, could you give me a list of your partners?"
She rose and, crossing to the writing table, sat down
in front of it. She drew a sheet of paper towards her and
took up a pencil. Pausing now and again to jog her
memory with the blunt end of the pencil at her lips, she
wrote down a list of names.
"These are all, I think," she said, handing the list to
Hanaud. He put it in his pocket.
"Thank you!" He was all contentment now. Al-
though his questions followed without hesitation, one
upon the other, it seemed to Jim that he was receiving
just the answers which he expected. He had the air of
a man engaged upon an inevitable formality and anxious
to get it completely accomplished, rather than of one
pressing keenly a strict investigation.
"Now, Mademoiselle, at what hour did you arrive
home?"
"At twenty minutes past one."
"You are sure of that exact time? You looked at your
watch? Or at the clock in the hall? Or what? How are
you sure that you reached the Maison Grenelle exactly at
twenty minutes past one?"
Hanaud hitched his chair a little more forward, but
he had not to wait a second for the answer.
"There is no clock in the hall and I had no watch with
me," Betty replied. "I don't like those wrist-watches
which some girls wear. I hate things round my wrists,"
and she shook her arm impatiently, as though she imag-
ined the constriction of a bracelet. "And I did not put
my watch in my hand-bag because I am so liable to leave
that behind. So I had nothing to tell me the time when I
reached home. I was not sure that I had not kept Georges
60


Betty Harlowe Answers
—the chauffeur—out a little later than he cared for. So
I made him my excuse, explaining that I didn't really
know how late I was."
"I see. It was Georges who told you the time at the
actual moment of your arrival?"
"Yes."
"And Georges is no doubt the chauffeur whom I saw
at work as I crossed the courtyard?"
"Yes. He told me that he was glad to see me have a
little gaiety, and he took out his watch and showed it to
me with a laugh."
"This happened at the front door, or at those big iron
gates, Mademoiselle?" Hanaud asked.
"At the front door. There is no lodge-keeper and the
gates are left open when any one is out."
"And how did you get into the house?"
"I used my latch-key."
"Good! All this is very clear."
Betty, however, was not mollified by Hanaud's satis-
faction with her replies. Although she answered him
without delay, her answers were given mutinously. Jim
began to be a little troubled. She should have met
Hanaud half-way; she was imprudently petulant.
"She'll make an enemy of this man before she has
done," he reflected uneasily. But he glanced at the detec-
tive and was relieved. For Hanaud was watching her
with a smile which would have disarmed any less offended
young lady—a smile half friendliness and half amuse-
ment. Jim took a turn upon himself.
"After all," he argued, "this very imprudence pleads
for her better than any calculation. The guilty don't be-
have like that." And he waited for the next stage in the
examination with an easy mind.
"Now we have got you back home and within the
Maison Grenelle before half past one in the morning,"
resumed Hanaud. "What did you do then?"
"I went straight upstairs to my bedroom," said Betty.
61


The House of the Arroxv
"Was your maid waiting up for you, Mademoiselle?"
"No; I had told her that I should be late and that I
could undress myself."
"You are considerate, Mademoiselle. No wonder that
your servants were pleased that you should have a little
gaiety."
Even that advance did not appease the offended girl.
"Yes?" she asked with a sort of silky sweetness which
was more hostile than any acid rejoinder. But it did
not stir Hanaud to any resentment.
"When, then, did you first hear of Madame Harlowe's
death?" was asked.
"The next morning my maid Francine came running
into my room at seven o'clock. The nurse Jeanne had
just discovered it. I slipped on my dressing-gown and
ran downstairs. As soon as I saw that it was true, I rang
up the two doctors who were in the habit of attending
here."
"Did you notice the glass of lemonade?"
"Yes. It was empty."
"Your maid is still with you?"
"Yes—Francine Rollard. She is at your disposal."
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders and smiled doubtfully.
"That, if it is necessary at all, can come later. We
have the story of your movements now from you, Made-
moiselle, and that is what is important."
He rose from his chair.
"I have been, I am afraid, a very troublesome person,
Mademoiselle Harlowe," he said with a bow. "But it is
very necessary for your own sake that no obscurities
should be left for the world's suspicions to play with.
And we are very close to the end of this ordeal."
Jim had nursed a hope the moment Hanaud rose that
this wearing interview had already ended. Betty, for her
part, was indifferent.
"That is for you to say, Monsieur," she said impla-
cably.
"Just two points then, and I think, upon reflection,
62


Betty Harlowe Answers
you will understand that I have asked you no question
which is unfair."
Betty bowed.
"Your two points, Monsieur."
"First, then. You inherit, I believe, the whole fortune
of Madame?"
"Yes."
"Did you expect to inherit it all? Did you know of her
will?"
"No. I expected that a good deal of the money would
be left to Monsieur Boris. But I don't remember that she
ever told me so. I expected it, because Monsieur Boris
so continually repeated that it was so."
"No doubt," said Hanaud lightly. "As to yourself,
was Madame generous to you during her life?-"
The hard look disappeared from Betty's face. It soft-
ened to sorrow and regret.
"Very," she answered in a low voice. "I had one thou-
sand pounds a year as a regular allowance, and a thou-
sand pounds goes a long way in Dijon. Besides, if I
wanted more, I had only to ask for it."
Betty's voice broke in a sob suddenly and Hanaud
turned away with a delicacy for which Jim was not pre-
pared. He began to look at the books upon the shelves,
that she might have time to control her sorrow, taking
down one here, one there, and speaking of them in a casual
tone.
"It is easy to see that this was the library of Monsieur
Simon Harlowe," he said, and was suddenly brought to a
stop. For the door was thrown open and a girl broke into
the room.
"Betty," she began, and stood staring from one to an-
other of Betty's visitors.
"Ann, this is Monsieur Hanaud," said Betty with a
careless wave of her hand, and Ann went white as a
sheet.
Ann! Then this girl was Ann Upcott, thought Jim
Frobisher, the girl who had written to him, the girl, all
63


The House of the Arrow
acquaintanceship with whom he had twice denied, and he
had sat side by side with her, he had even spoken to her.
She swept across the room to him.
"So you have come!" she cried. "But I knew that you
would!"
Jim was conscious of a mist of shining yellow hair, a
pair of sapphire eyes, and of a face impertinently lovely
and most delicate in its colour.
"Of course I have come," he said feebly, and Hanaud
looked on with a smile. He had an eye on Betty Har-
lowe, and the smile said as clearly as words could say,
"That young man is going to have a deal of trouble be-
fore he gets out of Dijon."
64


The House of the Arrow
with a glance at the bookshelf. It was the idlest of re-
marks. He was not paying any attention to the paper-
covered book upon Battersea Enamel. For he was really
engaged in speculating why Hanaud had called him to his
side. Was it on the chance that he might detect some
swift look of understanding as it was exchanged by the
two girls, some sign that they were in a collusion? If so,
he was to be disappointed. For though Betty and Ann
were now free from Hanaud's vigilant eye, neither of
them moved, neither of them signalled to the other.
Hanaud, however, seemed entirely interested in his book.
He answered Jim's suggestion.
"Yes, one would suppose that there were a second vol-
ume. But this is complete," he said, and he put back the
book in its place. There was room next to it for another
quarto book, so long as it was no thicker, and Hanaud
rested his finger in the vacant place on the shelf, with his
thoughts clearly far away.
Betty recalled him to his surroundings.
"Monsieur Hanaud," she said in her quiet voice from
her seat in the window, "there was a second point, you
said, on which you would like to ask me a question."
"Yes, Mademoiselle, I had not forgotten it."
He turned with a curiously swift movement and stood
so that he had both girls in front of him, Betty on his
left in the window, Ann Upcott standing a little apart
upon his right, gazing at him with a look of awe.
"Have you, Mademoiselle," he asked, "been pestered,
since Boris Waberski brought his accusation, with any
of these anonymous letters which seem to be flying about
Dijon?"
"I have received one," answered Betty, and Ann Upcott
raised her eyebrows in surprise. "It came on Sunday
morning. It was very slanderous, of course, and I should
have taken no notice of it but for one thing. It told me
that you, Monsieur Hanaud, were coming from Paris to
take up the case."
"Oho!" said Hanaud softly. "And you received this
66


Jim Changes His Lodging
letter on the Sunday morning? Can you show it to me,
Mademoiselle?"
Betty shook her head.
"No, Monsieur."
Hanaud smiled.
"Of course not. You destroyed it, as such letter should
be destroyed."
"No, I didn't," Betty answered. "I kept it. I put it
away in a drawer of my writing-table in my own sitting-
room. But that room is sealed up, Monsieur Hanaud.
iThe letter is in the drawer still."
Hanaud received the statement with a frank satisfac-
tion.
"It cannot run away, then, Mademoiselle," he said con-
tentedly. But the contentment passed. "So the Commis-
saire of Police actually sealed up your private sitting-
room. That, to be sure, was going a little far."
Betty shrugged her shoulders.
"It was mine, you see, where I keep my private things.
And after all I was accused!" she said bitterly; but Ann
Upcott was not satisfied to leave the matter there. She
drew a step nearer to Betty and then looked at Hanaud.
"But that is not all the truth," she said. "Betty's room
belongs to that suite of rooms in which Madame Har-
lowe's bedroom was arranged. It is the last room of the
suite opening on to the hall, and for that reason, as the
Commissaire said with an apology, it was necessary to
seal it up with the others."
"I thank you, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud with a
smile. "Yes, that of course softens his action." He
looked whimsically at Betty in the window-seat. "It has
been my misfortune, I am afraid, to offend Mademoiselle
Harlowe. Will you help me to get all these troublesome
dates now clear? Madame Harlowe was buried, I un-
derstand, on the Saturday morning twelve days ago!"
"Yes, Monsieur," said Ann Upcott.
"And after the funeral, on your return to this house,
the notary opened and read the will?"
67


The House of the Arrow
"Yes, Monsieur."
"And in Boris Waberski's presence?"
"Yes."
"Then exactly a week later, on Saturday, the seventh of
May, he goes off quickly to the Prefecture of Police?"
"Yes."
"And on Sunday morning by the post comes the anony-
mous letter?"
Hanaud turned away to Betty, who bowed her head in
answer.
"And a little later on the same morning comes the Com-
missaire, who seals the doors."
"At eleven o'clock, to be exact," replied Ann Upcott.
Hanaud bowed low.
'You are both wonderful young ladies. You notice the
precise hour at which things happen. It is a rare gift, and
very useful to people like myself."
Ann Upcott had been growing easier and easier in her
manner with each answer that she gave. Now she could
laugh outright.
"I do, at all events, Monsieur Hanaud," she said. "But
alas! I was born to be an old maid. A chair out of place,
a book disarranged, a clock not keeping time, or even a
pin on the carpet—I cannot bear these things. I notice
them at once and I must put them straight. Yes, it was
precisely eleven o'clock when the Commissaire of Police
rang the bell."
"Did he search the rooms before he sealed them?"
Hanaud asked.
"No. We both of us thought his negligence strange,"
Ann replied, "until he informed us that the Examining
Magistrate wanted everything left just as it was."
Hanaud laughed genially.
"That was on my account," he explained. "Who could
tell what wonderful things Hanaud might not discover
with his magnifying glass when he arrived from Paris?
What fatal fingerprints! Oh! Ho! ho! What scraps
of burnt letter! Ah! Ha! ha! But I tell you, Mademoi-
68


Jim Changes His Lodging
selle, that if a crime has been committed in this house,
even Hanaud would not expect to make any startling
discoveries in rooms which had been open to the whole
household for a fortnight since the crime. However,"
and he moved towards the door, "since I am here
now"
Betty was upon her feet like a flash of lightning.
Hanaud stopped and swung round upon her, swiftly, with
his eyes very challenging and hard.
"You are going to break those seals now?" she asked
with a curious breathlessness. "Then may I come with
you—please, please! It is I who am accused. I have a
right to be present," and her voice rose into an earnest
cry.
"Calm yourself, Mademoiselle," Hanaud returned
gently. "No advantage will be taken of you. I am go-
ing to break no seals. That, as I have told you, is the
right of the Commissaire, who is a magistrate, and he
will not move until the medical analysis is ready. No,
what I was going to propose was that Mademoiselle
here," and he pointed to Ann, "should show me the out-
side of those reception-rooms and the rest of the house."
"Of course," said Betty, and she sat down again in the
window-seat.
"Thank you," said Hanaud. He turned back to Ann
Upcott. "Shall we go? And as we go, will you tell me
what you think of Boris Waberski?"
"He has some nerve. I can tell you that, Monsieur
Hanaud," Ann cried. "He actually came back to this
house after he had lodged his charge, and asked me to
support him"; and she passed out of the room in front of
Hanaud.
Jim Frobisher followed the couple to the door and
closed it behind them. The last few minutes had set his
mind altogether at rest. The author of the anonymous
letters was the detective's real quarry. His manner had
quite changed when putting his questions about them.
The flamboyancies and the indifference, even his amuse-
69


The House of the Arrow
ment at Betty's ill-humour had quite disappeared. He
had got to business watchfully, quietly. Jim came back
into the room. He took his cigarette-case from his pocket
and opened it.
"May I smoke?" he asked. As he turned to Betty tor
permission, a fresh shock brought his thoughts and words
alike to a standstill. She was staring at him with panic
naked in her eyes and her face set like a tragic mask.
"He believes me guilty," she whispered.
"No," said Jim, and he went to her side. But she
would not listen.
"He does. I am sure of it. Don't you see that he was
bound to? He was sent from Paris. He has his reputa-
tion to think of. He must have his victim before he
returns."
Jim was sorely tempted to break his word. He had
only to tell the real cause which had fetched Hanaud out
of Paris and Betty's distress was gone. But he could
not. Every tradition of his life strove to keep him silent.
He dared not even tell her that this charge against her
was only an excuse. She must live in anxiety for a little
while longer. He laid his hand gently upon her shoulder.
"Betty, don't believe that!" he said, with a conscious-
ness of how weak that phrase was compared with the
statement he could have made. "I was watching Hanaud,
listening to him. I am sure that he already knew the
answers to the questions he was asking you. Why, he
even knew that Simon Harlowe had a passion for collect-
ing, though not a word had been said of it. He was ask-
ing questions to see how you would answer them, setting
now and then a little trap, as he admitted"
"Yes," said Betty in trembling voice, "all the time he
was setting traps."
"And every answer that you gave, even your manner
in giving them," Jim continued stoutly, "more and more
made clear your innocence."
"To him?" asked Betty.
"Yes, to him. I am sure of it."
70


Jim Changes His Lodging
Betty Harlowe caught at his arm and held it in both
her hands. She leaned her head against it. Through the
sleeve of his coat he felt the velvet of her cheek.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you, Jim," and
as she pronounced the name she smiled. She was thank-
ing him not so much for the stout confidence of his words,
as for the comfort which the touch of him gave to her.
"Very likely I am making too much of little things," she
went on. "Very likely I am ungenerous, too, to Monsieur
Hanaud. But he lives amidst crimes and criminals. He
must be so used to seeing people condemned and passing
out of sight into blackness and horrors, that one more
or less, whether innocent or guilty, going that way,
wouldn't seem to matter very much."
"Yes, Betty, I think that is a little unjust," Jim Fro-
bisher remarked gently.
"Very well, I take it back," she said, and she let his
arm go. "All the same, Jim, I am looking to you, not
to him," and she laughed with an appealing tremor in the
laugh which took his heart by storm.
"Luckily," said he, "you don't have to look to any one,"
and he had hardly finished the sentence before Ann
Upcott came back alone into the room. She was about
Betty's height and Betty's age and had the same sort of
boyish slenderness and carriage which marks the girls of
this generation. But in other respects, even to the colour
of her clothes, she was as dissimilar as one girl can be
from another. She was dressed in white from her coat to
her shoes, and she wore a big gold hat so that one was
almost at a loss to know where her hat ended and her
hair began.
"And Monsieur Hanaud?" Betty asked.
"He is prowling about by himself," she replied. "I
showed him all the rooms and who used them, and he
said that he would have a look at them and sent me back
to you."
"Did he break the seals on the reception-rooms?" Betty
Harlowe asked.
71


The House of the Arrow
"Oh, no," said Ann. "Why, he told us that he couldn't
do that without the Commissaire."
"Yes, he told us that," Betty remarked dryly. "But I
was wondering whether he meant what he told us."
"Oh, I don't think Monsieur Hanaud's alarming," said
Ann. She gave Jim Frobisher the impression that at any
moment she might call him a dear old thing. She had
quite got over the first little shock which the announce-
ment of his presence had caused her. "Besides," and she
sat down by the side of Betty in the window-seat and
looked with the frankest confidence at Jim—"besides, we
can feel safe now, anyway."
Jim Frobisher threw up his hands in despair. That
queer look of aloofness had played him false with Ann
Upcott now, as it had already done with Betty. If these
two girls had called on him for help when a sudden squall
found them in an open sailing-boat with the sheet of the
sail made fast, or on the ice-slope of a mountain, or with
a rhinoceros lumbering towards them out of some forest
of the Nile, he would not have shrunk from their trust
.
But this was quite a different matter. They were calmly
pitting him against Hanaud.
"You were safe before," he exclaimed. "Hanaud is
not your enemy, and as for me, I have neither experience
nor natural gifts for this sort of work"—and he broke off
with a groan. For both the girls were watching him with
a smile of complete disbelief.
"Good heavens, they think that I am being astute," he
reflected, "and the more I confess my incapacity the
astuter they'll take me to be." He gave up all arguments.
"Of course I am absolutely at your service," he said.
"Thank you," said Betty. "You will bring your lug-
gage from your hotel and stay here, won't you?"
Jim was tempted to accept that invitation. But, on
the one hand, he might wish to see Hanaud at the Grande
Taverne; or Hanaud might wish to see him, and secrecy
was to be the condition of such meetings. It was better
that he should keep his freedom of movement complete.
72


Jim, Changes His Lodging
"I won't put you to so much trouble, Betty," he re-
plied. "There's no reason in the world that I should.
A call over the telephone and in five minutes I am at your
side."
Betty Harlowe seemed in doubt to press her invitation
or not.
"It looks a little inhospitable in me," she began, and the
door opened, and Hanaud entered the room.
"I left my hat and stick here," he said. He picked them
up and bowed to the girls.
"You have seen everything, Monsieur Hanaud?" Betty
asked.
"Everything, Mademoiselle. I shall not trouble you
again until the report of the analysis is in my hands. I
wish you a good morning."
Betty slipped off the window-seat and accompanied him
out into the hall. It appeared to Jim Frobisher that she
was seeking to make some amends for her ill-humour; and
when he heard her voice he thought to detect in it some
note of apology.
"I shall be very glad if you will let me know the sense
of that report as soon as possible," she pleaded. "You,
better than any one, will understand that this is a difficult
hour for me."
"I understand very well, Mademoiselle," Hanaud an-
swered gravely. "I will see to it that the hour is not
prolonged."
Jim, watching them through the doorway, as they stood
together in the sunlit hall, felt ever so slight a touch upon
his arm. He wheeled about quickly. Ann Upcott was
at his side with all the liveliness and even the delicate
colour gone from her face, and a wild and desperate ap-
peal in her eyes.
"You will come and stay here? Oh, please!" she whis-
pered.
"I have just refused," he answered. "You heard me."
"I know," she went on, the words stumbling over one
another from her lips. "But take back your refusal. Do!
73


The House of the Arrow
Oh, I am frightened out of my wits. I don't understand
anything. I am terrified!" And she clasped her hands
together in supplication. Jim had never seen fear so
stark, no, not even in Betty's eyes a few minutes ago.
It robbed her exquisite face of all its beauty, and made it
in a second, haggard and old. But before he could an-
swer, a stick clattered loudly upon the pavement of the
hall and startled them both like the crack of a pistol.
Jim looked through the doorway. Hanaud was stoop-
ing to pick up his cane. Betty made a dive for it, but
Hanaud already had it in his hands.
"I thank you, Mademoiselle, but I can still touch my
toes. Every morning I do it five times in my pyjamas,"
and with a laugh he ran down the couple of steps into the
courtyard and with that curiously quick saunter of his
was out into the street of Charles-Robert in a moment.
When Jim turned again to Ann Upcott, the fear had gone
from her face so completely that he could hardly believe
his eyes.
"Betty, he is going to stay," she cried gaily.
"So I inferred," replied Betty with a curious smile as
she came back into the room.'
74


chapter seven: Exit Waberski
JIM FROBISHER neither saw nor heard any more of
Hanaud that day. He fetched his luggage away from
the hotel and spent the evening with Betty Harlowe and
Ann Upcott at the Maison Grenelle. They took their
coffee after dinner in the garden behind the house, de-
scending to it by a short flight of stone steps from a great
door at the back of the hall. And by some sort of un-
spoken compact they avoided all mention of Waberski's
charge. They had nothing to do but to wait now for the
analyst's report. But the long line of high, shuttered
windows just above their heads, the windows of the re-
ception-rooms, forbade them to forget the subject, and
their conversation perpetually dwindled down into long
silences. It was cool out here in the dark garden, cool
and very still; so that the bustle of a bird amongst the
leaves of the sycamores startled them and the rare foot-
steps of a passer-by in the little street of Charles-Robert
rang out as though they would wake a dreaming city.
Jim noticed that once or twice Ann Upcott leaned swiftly
forward and stared across the dark lawns and glimmer-
ing paths to the great screen of tall trees, as if her eyes
had detected a movement amongst their stems. But on
each occasion she said nothing and with an almost in-
audible sigh sank back in her chair.
"Is there a door into the garden from the street?" Fro-
bisher asked, and Betty answered him.
"No. There is a passage at the end of the house under
the reception-rooms from the courtyard which the garden-
ers use. The only other entrance is through the hall
behind us. This old house was built in days when your
house really was your castle and the fewer the entrances,
the more safely you slept."
75


The House of the 'Arrow
The clocks of that city of Clocks clashed out the hour
of eleven, throwing the sounds of their strokes backwards
and forwards above the pinnacles and roof-tops in a sort
of rivalry. Betty rose to her feet.
"There's a day gone, at all events," she said, and Ann
Upcott agreed with a breath of relief. To Jim it seemed
a pitiful thing that these two girls, to whom each day
should be a succession of sparkling hours all too short,
must be rejoicing quietly, almost gratefully, that another
of them had passed.
"It should be the last of the bad days," he said, and
Betty turned swiftly towards him, her great eyes shining
in the darkness.
"Good night, Jim," she said, her voice ever so slightly
lingering like a caress upon his name and she held out
her hand. "It's terribly dull for you, but we are not
unselfish enough to let you go. You see, we are shunned
just now—oh, it's natural! To have you with us means
a great deal. For one thing," and there came a little lilt
in her voice, "I shall sleep to-night." She ran up the
steps and stood for a moment against the light from the
hall. "A long-legged slip of a girl, in black silk stock-
ings"—thus Mr. Haslitt had spoken of her as she was
five years ago, and the description fitted her still.
"Good night, Betty," said Jim, and Ann Upcott ran
past him up the steps and waved her hand.
"Good night," said Jim, and with a little twist of her
shoulders Ann followed Betty. She came back, however.
She was wearing a little white frock of crepe de Chine
with white stockings and satin shoes, and she gleamed at
the head of the steps like a slender thing of silver.
"You'll bolt the door when you come in, won't you?"
she pleaded with a curious anxiety considering the height
of the strong walls about the garden
"I will," said Jim, and he wondered why in all this
business Ann Upcott stood out as a note of fear. It was
high time indeed, that the long line of windows was
thrown open and the interdict raised from the house and
76


Exit Waberski
its inmates. Jim Frobisher paced the quiet garden in the
darkness with a prayer at his heart that that time would
come to-morrow. In Betty's room above the reception-
rooms the light was still burning behind the latticed shut-
ters of the windows, in spite of her confidence that she
would sleep—yes, and in Ann Upcott's room too, at the
end of the house towards the street. A fury against
Boris Waberski flamed up in him.
It was late before he himself went into the house and
barred the door, later still before he fell asleep. But
once asleep, he slept soundly, and when he waked, it was
to find his shutters thrown wide to the sunlight, his coffee
cold by his bedside, and Gaston, the old servant, in the
room.
"Monsieur Hanaud asked me to tell you he was in the
library," he said.
Jim was out of bed in an instant.
"Already? What is the time, Gaston?"
"Nine o'clock. I have prepared Monsieur's bath." He
removed the tray from the table by the bed. "I will bring
some fresh coffee."
"Thank you! And will you please tell Monsieur
Hanaud that I will not be long."
"Certainly, Monsieur."
Jim took his coffee while he dressed and hurried down
to the library, where he found Hanaud seated at the big
writing-table in the middle of the room, with a newspaper
spread out over the blotting-pad and placidly reading the
news. He spoke quickly enough, however, the moment
Jim appeared.
"So you left your hotel in the Place Darcy, after all,
eh, my friend? The exquisite Miss Upcott! She had but
to sigh out a little prayer and clasp her hands together,
and it was done. Yes, I saw it all from the hall. What
it is to be young! You have those two letters which
Waberski wrote your firm?"
"Yes," said Jim. He did not think it necessary to ex-
plain that though the prayer was Ann Upcott's, it was
77


The House of the Arrow
the thought of Betty which had brought him to the
Maison Grenelle.
"Good! I have sent for him," said Hanaud.
"To come to this house?"
"I am expecting him now."
"That's capital," cried Jim. "I shall meet him, then!
The damned rogue! I shouldn't wonder if I thumped
him," and he clenched his fist and shook it in a joyous
anticipation.
"I doubt if that would be so helpful as you think. No,
I beg of you to place yourself in my hands this morn-
ing, Monsieur Frobisher," Hanaud interposed soberly.
"If you confront Waberski at once with those two letters,
at once his accusation breaks down. He will withdraw
it. He will excuse himself. He will burst into a torrent
of complaints and reproaches. And I shall get nothing
out of him. That I do not want."
"But what is there to be got?" Jim asked impatiently.
"Something perhaps. Perhaps nothing," the detective
returned with a shrug of the shoulders. "I have a second
mission in Dijon, as I told you in Paris."
"The anonymous letters?"
"Yes. You were present yesterday when Mademoi-
selle Harlowe told me how she learned that I was sum-
moned from Paris upon this case. It was not, after all,
any of my colleagues here who spread the news. It is
even now unknown that I am here. No, it was the writer
of the letters. And in so difficult a matter I can afford
to neglect no clue. Did Waberski know that I was going
to be sent for? Did he hear that at the Prefecture when
he lodged his charge on the Saturday or from the exam-
ining magistrate on the same day? And if he did, to
whom did he talk between the time when he saw the mag-
istrate and the time when letters must be posted if they
are to be delivered on the Sunday morning? These are
questions I must have the answer to, and if we at once
administer the knock-out with your letters, I shall not
78


Exit Waberski
get them. I must lead him on with friendliness. You
see that."
Jim very reluctantly did. He had longed to see
Hanaud dealing with Waberski in the most outrageous
of his moods, pouncing and tearing and trampling with
the gibes of a schoolboy and the improprieties of the
gutter. Hanaud indeed had promised him as much. But
he found him now all for restraint and sobriety and more
concerned apparently with the authorship of the anony-
mous letters than with the righting of Betty Harlowe.
Jim felt that he had been defrauded.
"But I am to meet this man," he said. "That must not
be forgotten."
"And it shall not be," Hanaud assured him. He led
him over to the door in the inner wall close to the ob-
servation window and opened it.
"See! If you will please to wait in here," and as the
disappointment deepened on Jim's face, he added, "Oh,
I do not ask you to shut the door. No. Bring up a chair
to it—so! And keep the door ajar so! Then you will
see and hear and yet not be seen. You are content? Not
very. You would prefer to be on the stage the whole
time like an actor. Yes, we all do. But, at all events,
you do not throw up your part," and with a friendly grin
he turned back to the table.
A shuffling step which merged into the next step with
a curiously slovenly sound rose from the courtyard.
"It was time we made our little arrangements," said
Hanaud in an undertone. "For here comes our hero from
the Steppes."
Jim popped his head through the doorway.
"Monsieur Hanaud!" he whispered excitedly. "Mon-
sieur Hanaud! It cannot be wise to leave those windows
open on the courtyard. For if we can hear a footstep so
loudly in this room, anything said in this room will be
easily overheard in the court."
"But how true that is!" Hanaud replied in the same
79


The House of the Arrow
voice and struck his forehead with his fist in anger at his
folly. "But what are we to do? The day is so hot.
This room will be an oven. The ladies and Waberski
will all faint. Besides, I have an officer in plain clothes
already stationed in the court to see that it is kept empty.
Yes, we will risk it."
Jim drew back.
"That man doesn't welcome advice from any one,"
he said indignantly, but he said it only to himself; and
almost before he had finished, the bell rang. A few
seconds afterwards Gaston entered.
"Monsieur Boris," he said.
"Yes," said Hanaud with a nod. "And will you tell
the ladies that we are ready?"
Boris Waberski, a long, round-shouldered man with
bent knees and clumsy feet, dressed in black and holding
a soft black felt hat in his hand, shambled quickly into
the room and stopped dead at the sight of Hanaud.
Hanaud bowed and Waberski returned the bow; and
then the two men stood looking at one another—Hanaud
all geniality and smiles, Waberski a rather grotesque
figure of uneasiness like one of those many grim carica-
tures carved by the imagination of the Middle Ages on
the columns of the churches of Dijon. He blinked in
perplexity at the detective and with his long, tobacco-
stained fingers tortured his grey moustache.
"Will you be seated?" said Hanaud politely. "I think
that the ladies will not keep us waiting."
He pointed towards a chair in front of the writing-
table but on his left hand and opposite to the door.
"I don't understand," said Waberski doubtfully. "I
received a message. I understood that the Examining
Magistrate had sent for me."
"I am his agent," said Hanaud. "I am "and he
stopped. "Yes?"
Boris Waberski stared.
"I said nothing."
80


Exit Waberski
"I beg your pardon. I am—Hanaud."
He shot the name out quickly, but he was answered by
no start, nor by any sign of recognition.
"Hanaud?" Waberski shook his head. "That no
doubt should be sufficient to enlighten me," he said with
a smile, "but it is better to be frank—it doesn't."
"Hanaud of the Surete of Paris."
And upon Waberski's face there came slowly a look of
utter consternation.
"Oh!" he said, and again "Oh!" with a lamentable look
towards the door as if he was in two minds whether to
make a bolt of it. Hanaud pointed again to the chair,
and Waberski murmured, "Yes—to be sure," and made
a little run to it and sank down.
Jim Frobisher, watching from his secret place, was cer-
tain of one thing. Boris Waberski had not written the
anonymous letter to Betty nor had he contributed the
information about Hanaud to the writer. He might well
have been thought to have been acting ignorance of
Hanaud's name, up to the moment when Hanaud ex-
plained who Hanaud was. But no longer. His conster-
nation then was too genuine.
"You will understand, of course, that an accusation
so serious as the one you have brought against Mademoi-
selle Harlowe demands the closest inquiry," Hanaud con-
tinued without any trace of irony, "and the Examining
Magistrate in charge of the case honoured us in Paris
with a request for help."
"Yes, it is very difficult," replied Boris Waberski,
twisting about as if he was a martyr on red-hot plates.
But the difficulty was Waberski's, as Jim, with that
distressed man in full view, was now able to appreciate.
Waberski had rushed to the Prefecture when no answer
came from Messrs. Frobisher & Haslitt to his letter of
threats, and had brought his charge in a spirit of dis-
appointment and rancour, with a hope no doubt that some
offer of cash would be made to him and that he could
81


The House of the Arrow
withdraw it. Now he found the trained detective service
of France upon his heels, asking for his proofs and evi-
dence. This was more than he had bargained for.
"I thought," Hanaud continued easily, "that a little
informal conversation between you and me and the two
young ladies, without shorthand writers or secretaries,
might be helpful."
"Yes, indeed," said Waberski hopefully.
"As a preliminary of course," Hanaud added dryly, "a
preliminary to the more serious and now inevitable pro-
cedure."
Waberski's gleam of hopefulness was extinguished.
"To be sure," he murmured, plucking at his lean throat
nervously. "Cases must proceed."
"That is what they are there for," said Hanaud senten-
tiously; and the door of the library was pushed open.
Betty came into the room with Ann Upcott immediately
behind her.
"You sent for me," she began to Hanaud, and then she
saw Boris Waberski. Her little head went up with a
jerk, her eyes smouldered. "Monsieur Boris," she said,
and again she spoke to Hanaud. "Come to take posses-
sion, I suppose?" Then she looked round the room for
Jim Frobisher, and exclaimed in a sudden dismay:
"But I understood that "and Hanaud was just in
time to stop her from mentioning any name.
"All in good time, Mademoiselle," he said quickly.
"Let us take things in their order."
Betty took her old place in the window-seat. Ann
Upcott shut the door and sat down in a chair a little apart
from the others. Hanaud folded up his newspaper and
laid it aside. On the big blotting-pad which was now
revealed lay one of those green files which Jim Frobisher
had noticed in the office of the Surete. Hanaud opened
it and took up the top paper. He turned briskly to
Waberski.
"Monsieur, you state that on the night of the 27th of
April, this girl here, Betty Harlowe, did wilfully give to
82


Exit Waberski
her adoptive mother and benefactress, Jeanne-Marie Har-
lowe, an overdose of a narcotic by which her death was
brought about."
"Yes," said Waberski' with an air of boldness, "I de-
clare that."
"You do not specify the narcotic?"
"It was probably morphine, but I cannot be sure."
"And administered, according to you, if this summary
which I hold here is correct, in the glass of lemonade
which Madame Harlowe had always at her bedside."
"Yes."
Hanaud laid the sheet of foolscap down again.
"You do not charge the nurse, Jeanne Baudin, with
complicity in this crime?" he asked.
"Oh, no!" Waberski exclaimed with a sort of horror,
with his eyes open wide and his eyebrows running up his
forehead towards his hedge of wiry hair. "I have not a
suspicion of Jeanne Baudin. I pray you, Monsieur
Hanaud, to be clear upon that point. There must be no
injustice! No! Oh, it is well that I came here to-day!
Jeanne Baudin! Listen! I would engage her to nurse
me to-morrow, were my health to fail."
"One cannot say more than that," replied Hanaud with
a grave sympathy. "I only asked you the question be-
cause undoubtedly Jeanne Baudin was in Madame's bed-
room when Mademoiselle entered it to wish Madame
good night and show off her new dancing-frock."
"Yes, I understand," said Waberski. He was growing
more and more confident, so suave and friendly was this
Monsieur Hanaud of the Surete. "But the fatal drug
was slipped into that glass without a doubt when Jeanne
Baudin was not looking. I do not accuse her. No! It
is that hard one," and his voice began to shake and his
mouth to work, "who slipped it in and then hurried off
to dance till morning, whilst her victim died. It is terrible
that! Yes, Monsieur Hanaud, it is terrible. My poor
sister!"
"Sister-in-law."
83


Exit Waberski
ment and the power which her beauty offers her if she
will but grasp it, and yet while thirsting, very able to
conceal all sign of thirst. That is the picture I give you
of that hard one, Betty Harlowe."
For the first time since the interview had commenced,
Betty herself showed some interest in it. Up till now
she had sat without a movement, a figure of disdain in
an ice-house of pride. Now she flashed into life. She
leaned forward, her elbow on her crossed knee, her chin
propped in her hand, her eyes on Waberski, and a smile
of amusement at this analysis of herself giving life to
her face. Jim Frobisher, on the other hand, behind his
door felt that he was listening to blasphemies. Why did
Hanaud endure it? There was information, he had said,
which he wanted to get from Boris Waberski. The point
on which he wanted information was settled long ago, at
the very beginning of this informal session. It was as
clear as daylight that Waberski had nothing to do with
Betty's anonymous letter. Why, then, should Hanaud
give this mountebank of a fellow a free opportunity to
slander Betty Harlowe? Why should he question and
question as if there were solid weight in the accusation?
Why, in a word, didn't he fling open this door, allow
Frobisher to produce the blackmailing letters to Mr.
Haslitt, and then stand aside while Boris Waberski was
put into that condition in which he would call upon the
services of Jeanne Baudin? Jim indeed was furiously
annoyed with Monsieur Hanaud. He explained to him-
self that he was disappointed.
Meanwhile, Boris Waberski, after a little nervous check
when Betty had leaned forward, continued his description.
"For such a one Dijon would be tiresome. It is true
there was each year a month or so at Monte Carlo, just
enough to give one a hint of what might be, like a
cigarette to a man who wants to smoke. And then back
to Dijon! Ah, Monsieur, not the Dijon of the Dukes of
Burgundy, not even the Dijon of the Parliament of the
States, but the Dijon of to-day, an ordinary, dull, provin-
85


The House of the Arrow
rial town of France which keeps nothing of its former
gaieties and glory but some old rare buildings and a little
spirit of mockery. Imagine, then, Monsieur, this hard
one with a fortune and freedom within her grasp if only
she has the boldness on some night when Monsieur Boris
is out of the way to seize them! Nor is that all. For
there is an invalid in the house to whom attentions are
owed—yes, and must be given." Waberski, in a flight of
excitement checked himself and half closed his eyes, with
a little cunning nod. "For the invalid was not so easy.
No, even that dear one had her failings. Oh, yes, and we
will not forget them when the moment comes for the
extenuating pleas. No, indeed," and he flung his arm
out nobly. "I myself will be the first to urge them to the
judge of the Assizes when the verdict is given."
Betty Harlowe leaned back once more indifferent.
From an arm-chair near the door, a little gurgle of laugh-
ter broke from the lips of Ann Upcott. Even Hanaud
smiled.
"Yes, yes," he said; "but we have not got quite as far
as the Court of Assizes, Monsieur Waberski. We are
still at the point where you know it in your heart but not
in your head."
"That is so," Waberski returned briskly. "On the
seventh of May, a Saturday, I bring my accusation to the
Prefecture. Why? For, on the morning of that day I
am certain. I know it at last here too," and up went his
hand to his forehead, and he hitched himself forward on
to the edge of his chair.
"I am in the street of Gambetta, one of the small popu-
lar new streets, a street with some little shops and a repu-
tation not of the best. At ten o'clock I am passing quickly
through that street when from a little shop a few yards
in front of me out pops that hard one, my niece."
Suddenly the whole character of that session had
changed. Jim Frobisher, though he sat apart from it,
felt the new tension, and was aware of the new expec-
tancy. A moment ago Boris Waberski as he sat talking
86


The House of the Arrow
nesses have been spirited away. But he is known! Jean
Cladel! Yes, Jean Cladel!"
"Jean Cladel, Herbalist of the street Gambetta,"
Hanaud repeated slowly. "But"—and he leaned back in
an easier attitude—"you will see my difficulty, Monsieur
Waberski. Ten o'clock is a public hour. It is not a likely
hour for any one to choose for so imprudent a visit, even
if that one were stupid."
"Yes, and so I reasoned too," Waberski interposed
quickly. "As I told you, I could not believe my eyes.
But I made sure—oh, there was no doubt, Monsieur
Hanaud. And I thought to myself this. Crimes are
discovered because criminals, even the acutest, do sooner
or later some foolish thing. Isn't it so? Sometimes they
are too careful; they make their proofs too perfect for an
imperfect world. Sometimes they are too careless or are
driven by necessity to a rash thing. But somehow a mis-
take is made and justice wins the game."
Hanaud smiled.
"Aha! a student of crime, Monsieur!" He turned to
Betty, and it struck upon Jim Frobisher with a curious
discomfort that this was the first time Hanaud had looked
directly at Betty since the interview had begun.
"And what do you say to this story, Mademoiselle?"
"It is a lie," she answered quietly.
"You did not visit Jean Cladel in the street of Gam-
betta at ten o'clock on the morning of the 7th of May?"
"I did not, Monsieur."
Waberski smiled and twisted his moustache.
"Of course! Of course! We could not expect Made-
moiselle to admit it. One fights for one's skin, eh?"
"But, after all," Hanaud interrupted, with enough sav-
agery in his voice to check all Waberski's complacency,
"let us not forget that on the 7th of May, Madame Har-
lowe had been dead for ten days. Why should Made-
moiselle still be going to the shop of Jean Cladel?"
"To pay," said Waberski. "Oh, no doubt Jean Cladel's
wares are expensive and have to be paid for more than
once, Monsieur."
88


The House of the Arrow
"Oh, I say that?" Hanaud asked, smiling pleasantly.
Waberski felt sure of his ground now.
"Yes, and more than that. You say, 'You have been
badly treated, my friend Waberski, and if you will now
have a little talk with that hard one your niece '"
And his chair slid back against the bookcase and he sat
gaping stupidly like a man who has been shot.
Hanaud had sprung to his feet, he stood towering
above the table, his face suddenly dark with passion.
"Oh, I say all that, do I?" he thundered. "I came
all the way from Paris to Dijon to preside over a little
bargain in a murder case! I—Hanaud! Oh! ho! ho!
I'll teach you a lesson for that! Read this!" and bend-
ing forward he thrust out the paper with the official seal.
"It is the report of the analysts. Take it, I tell you, and
read it!"
Waberski reached out a trembling arm, afraid to ven-
ture nearer. Even when he had the paper in his hands,
they shook so he could not read it. But since he had
never believed in his charge that did not matter.
"Yes," he muttered, "no doubt I have made a mis-
take."
Hanaud caught the word up.
"Mistake! Ah, there's a fine word! I'll show you
what sort of a mistake you have made. Draw up your
chair to this table in front of me! So! And take a
pen—so! And a sheet of paper—so! and now you write
for me a letter."
"Yes, yes," Waberski agreed. All the bravado had
gone from his bearing, all the insinuating slyness. He
was in a quiver from head to foot. "I will write that I
am sorry."
"That is not necessary," roared Hanaud. "I will see
to it that you are sorry. No! You write for me what I
dictate to you and in English. You are ready? Yes?
Then you begin. 'Dear Sirs.' You have that?"
"Yes, yes," said Waberski, scribbling hurriedly. His
head was in a whirl. He flinched as he wrote under the
90


Eacit Waberski
towering bulk of the detective. He had as yet no com-
prehension of the goal to which he was being led.
"Good! 'Dear Sirs,'" Hanaud repeated. "But we
want a date for that letter. April 30th, eh? That will
do. The day Madame Harlowe's will was read and you
found you were left no money. April 30th—put it in.
So! Now we go on. 'Dear Sirs, Send me at once one
thousand pounds by the recommended post, or I make
some awkwardnesses '"
Waberski dropped his pen and sprang back out of his
chair.
"I don't understand—I can't write that. . . . There
is an error—I never meant . . ." he stammered, his
hands raised as if to ward off an attack.
"Ah, you never meant the blackmail!" Hanaud cried
savagely. "Ah! Ha! Ha! It is good for you that I
now know that! For when, as you put it so delicately
to Mademoiselle, the moment comes for the extenuating
pleas, I can rise up in the Court and urge it. Yes! I
will say: 'Mr. the President, though he did the blackmail,
poor fellow, he never meant it. So please to give him
five years more,'" and with that Hanaud swept across
the room like a tornado and flung open the door behind
which Frobisher was waiting.
"Come!" he said, and he led Jim into the room. "You
produce the two letters he wrote to your firm, Monsieur
Frobisher. Good!"
But it was not necessary to produce them. Boris
Waberski had dropped into a chair and burst into tears.
There was a little movement of discomfort made by
every one in that room except Hanaud; and even his
anger dropped. He looked at Waberski in silence.
"You make us all ashamed. You can go back to your
hotel," he said shortly. "But you will not leave Dijon,
Monsieur Waberski, until it is decided what steps we shall
take with you."
Waberski rose to his feet and stumbled blindly to the
door.
91


The House of the Arrow
"I make my apologies," he stammered. "It is all a
mistake. I am very poor ... I meant no harm," and
without looking at any one he got himself out of the
room.
"That type! He at all events cannot any more think
that Dijon is dull," said Hanaud, and once more he
adventured on the dangerous seas of the English lan-
guage. "Do you know what my friend Mister Ricardo
would have said? No? I tell you. He would have said,
That fellow! My God! What a sauce!'"
Those left in the room, Betty, Ann Upcott, and Jim
Frobisher, were in a mood to welcome any excuse for
laughter. The interdict upon the house was raised, the
charge against Betty proved of no account, the whole
bad affair was at an end. Or so it seemed. But Hanaud
went quickly to the door and closed it, and when he
turned back there was no laughter at all upon his face.
"Now that that man has gone," he said gravely, "I
have something to tell you three which is very serious. I
believe that, though Waberski does not know it, Madame
Harlowe was murdered by poison in this house on the
night of April the twenty-seventh."
The statement was received in a dreadful silence. Jim
Frobisher stood like a man whom some calamity has
stunned. Betty leaned forward in her seat with a face of
horror and incredulity; and then from the arm-chair by
the door where Ann Upcott was sitting there burst a loud,
wild cry.
"There was some one in the house that night," she
cried.
Hanaud swung round to her, his eyes blazing.
"And it is you who tell me that, Mademoiselle?" he
asked in a curious, steady voice.
"Yes. It's the truth," she cried with a sort of relief
in her voice, that at last a secret was out which had grown
past endurance. "I am sure now. There was a stranger
in the house." And though her face was white as paper,
her eyes met Hanaud's without fear.
92


CHAPTER EIGHT: The Book
THE two startling declarations, one treading upon the
heels of the other, set Jim Frobisher's brain whirl-
ing. Consternation and bewilderment were all jumbled
together. He had no time to ask "how," for he was
already asking "What next?" His first clear thought
was for Betty, and as he looked at her, a sharp anger
against both Hanaud and Ann Upcott seized and shook
him. Why hadn't they both spoken before? Why must
they speak now? Why couldn't they leave well alone?
For Betty had fallen back in the window-seat, her
hands idle at her sides and her face utterly weary and
distressed. Jim thought of some stricken patient who
wakes in the morning to believe for a few moments that
the malady was a bad dream; and then comes the stab
and the cloud of pain settles down for another day. A
moment ago Betty's ordeal seemed over. Now it was
beginning a new phase.
"I am sorry," he said to her.
The report of the analysts was lying on the writing-
table just beneath his eyes. He took it up idly. It was
a trick, of course, with its seals and its signatures, a
trick of Hanaud's to force Waberski to a retraction. He
glanced at it, and with an exclamation began carefully
to read it through from the beginning to the end. When
he had finished, he raised his head and stared at Hanaud.
"But this report is genuine," he cried. "Here are
the details of the tests applied and the result. There was
no trace discovered of any poison."
"No trace at all," Hanaud replied. He was not in the
least disturbed by the question.
"Then I don't understand why you bring the accusa-
tion or whom you accuse," Frobisher exclaimed.
"I have accused no one," said Hanaud steadily. "Let
93


The House of the Arrow
us be clear about that! As to your other question—
look!"
He took Frobisher by the elbow and led him to that
bookshelf by the window before which they had stood
together yesterday.
"There was an empty space here yesterday. You your-
self drew my attention to it. You see that the space is
filled to-day."
"Yes," said Jim.
Hanaud took down the volume which occupied the
space. It was of quarto size, fairly thick and bound in a
paper cover.
"Look at that," he said; and Jim Frobisher as he took
it noticed with a queer little start that although Hanaud's
eyes were on his face they were blank of all expression.
They did not see him. Hanaud's senses were concen-
trated on the two girls at neither of whom he so much
as glanced. He was alert to them, to any movement they
might make of surprise or terror. Jim threw up his
head in a sudden revolt. He was being used for another
trick, as some conjurer may use a fool of a fellow whom
he has persuaded out of his audience on to his platform.
Jim looked at the cover of the book, and cried with
enough violence to recall Hanaud's attention:
"I see nothing here to the point. It is a treatise printed
by some learned society in Edinburgh."
"It is. And if you will look again, you will see that
it was written by a Professor of Medicine in that Uni-
versity. And if you will look a third time you will see
from a small inscription in ink that the copy was pre-
sented with the Professor's compliments to Mr. Simon
Harlowe."
Hanaud, whilst he was speaking, went to the second
of the two windows which looked upon the court and put-
ting his head out, spoke for a little while in a low voice.
"We shall not need our sentry here any more," he
said as he turned back into the room. "I have sent him
upon an errand."
94


The Book
He went back to Jim Frobisher, who was turning over
a page of the treatise here and there and was never a
scrap the wiser.
"Well?" he asked.
"Strophanthus Hispidus," Jim read aloud the title of
the treatise. "I can't make head or tail of it."
"Let me try!" said Hanaud, and he took the book out
of Frobisher's hands. "I will show you all how I spent
the half-hour whilst I was waiting for you this morning."
He sat down at the writing-table, placed the treatise on
the blotting-pad in front of him and laid it open at a
coloured plate.
"This is the fruit of the plant Strophanthus Hispidus,
when it is ripening," he said.
The plate showed' two long, tapering follicles joined
together at their stems and then separating like a pair
of compasses set at an acute angle. The backs of these
follicles were rounded, dark in colour and speckled; the
inner surfaces, however, were flat, and the curious fea-
ture of them was that, from longitudinal crevices, a num-
ber of silky white feathers protruded.
"Each of these feathers," Hanaud continued, and he
looked up to find that Ann Upcott had drawn close to
the table and that Betty Harlowe herself was leaning
forward with a look of curiosity upon her face—"each
of these feathers is attached by a fine stalk to an elliptical
pod, which is the seed, and when the fruit is quite ripe
and these follicles have opened so that they make a
straight line, the feathers are released and the wind
spreads the seed. It is wonderful, eh? See!"
Hanaud turned the pages until he came to another plate.
Here a feather was represented in complete detachment
from the follicle. It was outspread like a fan and was
extraordinarily pretty and delicate in its texture; and
from it by a stem as fine as a hair the seed hung like a
jewel.
"What would you say of it, Mademoiselle?" Hanaud
asked, looking up into the face of Ann Upcott with a
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The House of the Arrow
smile. "An ornament wrought for a fine lady, by a
dainty artist, eh?" and he turned the book round so that
she on the opposite side of the table might the better
admire the engraving.
Betty Harlowe, it seemed, was now mastered by her
curiosity. Jim Frobisher, gazing down over Hanaud's
shoulder at the plate and wondering uneasily whither he
was being led, saw a shadow fall across the book. And
there was Betty, standing by the side of her friend with
the palms of her hands upon the edge of the table and her
face bent over the book.
"One could wish it was an ornament, this seed of the
Strophanthus Hispidus," Hanaud continued with a shake
of the head. "But, alas! it is not so harmless."
He turned the book around again to himself and once
more turned the pages. The smile had disappeared alto-
gether from his face. He stopped at a third plate; and
this third plate showed a row of crudely fashioned arrows
with barbed heads.
Hanaud glanced up over his shoulder at Jim.
"Do you understand now the importance of this book,
Monsieur Frobisher?" he asked. "No? The seeds of
this plant make the famous arrow-poison of Africa. The
deadliest of all the poisons since there is no antidote
for it." His voice grew sombre. "The wickedest of all
the poisons, since it leaves no trace."
Jim Frobisher was startled. "Is that true?" he cried.
"Yes," said Hanaud; and Betty suddenly leaned for-
ward and pointed to the bottom of the plate.
"There is a mark there below the hilt of that arrow,"
she said curiously. "Yes, and a tiny note in ink."
For a moment a little gift of vision was vouchsafed
to Jim Frobisher, born, no doubt, of his perplexities and
trouble. A curtain was rung up in his brain. He saw
no more than what was before him—the pretty group
about the table in the gold of the May morning, but it
was all made grim and terrible and the gold had with-
ered to a light that was grey and deathly and cold as the
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The Book
grave. There were the two girls in the grace of their
beauty and their youth, daintily tended, fastidiously
dressed, bending their shining curls over that plate of the
poison arrows like pupils at a lecture. And the man de-
livering the lecture, so close to them, with speech so
gentle, was implacably on the trail of murder, and maybe
even now looked upon one of these two girls as his
quarry; was even now perhaps planning to set her in
the dock of an Assize Court and send her out afterwards,
carried screaming and sobbing with terror in the first
grey of the morning to the hideous red engine erected
during the night before the prison gates. Jim saw
Hanaud the genial and friendly, as in some flawed mirror,
twisted into a sinister and terrifying figure. How could
he sit so close with them at the table, talk to them, point
them out this and that diagram in the plates, he being
human and knowing what he purposed. Jim broke in
upon the lecture with a cry of exasperation.
"But this isn't a poison! This is a book about a poison.
The book can't kill!"
At once Hanaud replied to him:
"Can't it?" he cried sharply. "Listen to what Made-
moiselle said a minute ago. Below the hilt of this arrow
marked 'Figure F,' the Professor has written a tiny note."
This particular arrow was a little different from the
others in the shape of its shaft. Just below the triangular
iron head the shaft expanded. It was as though the head
had been fitted into a bulb; as one sees sometimes wooden
penholders fine enough and tapering at the upper end,
and quite thick just above the nib.
"'See page 37,' " said Hanaud, reading the Professor's
note, and he turned back the pages.
"Page 37. Here we are!"
Hanaud ran a finger half-way down the page and
stopped at a word in capitals.
"Figure F."
Hanaud hitched his chair a little closer to the table;
Ann Upcott moved round the end of the table that she
97


The House of the Arrow
might see the better; even Jim Frobisher found himself
stooping above Hanaud's shoulder. They were all con-
scious of a queer tension; they were expectant like ex-
plorers on the brink of a discovery. Whilst Hanaud read
the paragraph aloud, it seemed that no one breathed; and
this is what he read:
"'Figure F is the representation of a poison arrow
which was lent to me by Simon Harlowe, Esq., of Black-
man's, Norfolk, and the Maison Grenelle at Dijon. It
was given to him by a Mr. John Carlisle, a trader on the
Shire River in the Kombe country, and is the most perfect
example of a poison arrow which I have seen. The Stro-
phantus seed has been pounded up in water and mixed
with the reddish clay used by the Kombe natives, and
the compound is thickly smeared over the head of the
arrow shaft and over the actual iron dart except at the
point and the edges. The arrow is quite new and the
compound fresh.'"
Hanaud leaned back in his chair when he had come to
the end of this paragraph.
"You see, Monsieur Frobisher, the question we have to
answer. Where is to-day Simon Harlowe's arrow?"
Betty looked up into Hanaud's face.
"If it is anywhere in this house, Monsieur, it should be
in the locked cabinet in my sitting-room."
"Your sitting-room?" Hanaud exclaimed sharply.
"Yes. It is what we call the Treasure Room—half
museum, half living-room. My uncle Simon used it,
Madame too. It was their favourite room, full of curios
and beautiful things. But after Simon Harlowe died
Madame would never enter it. She locked the door which
communicated with her dressing-room, so that she might
never even in a moment of forgetfulness enter it. The
room has a door into the hall. She gave the room to
me."
Hanaud's forehead cleared of its wrinkles.
"I understand," he said. "And that room is sealed."
"Yes."
98


The Booh
"Have you ever seen the arrow, Mademoiselle?"
"Not that I remember. I only looked into the cabinet
once. There are some horrible things hidden away
there"; and Betty shivered and shook the recollection of
them from her shoulders.
"The chances are that it's not in the house at all, that
it never came back to the house," Frobisher argued stub-
bornly. "The Professor in all probability would have
kept it."
"If he could," Hanaud rejoined. "But it's out of all
probability that a collector of rare things would have al-
lowed him to keep it. No!" and he sat for a little time
in a muse. "Do you know what I am wondering?" he
asked at length, and then answered his own question. "I
am wondering whether after all Boris Waberski was not
in the street of Gambetta on the seventh of May and close,
very close, to the shop of Jean Cladel the herbalist."
"Boris! Boris Waberski," cried Jim. Was he in
Hanaud's eyes the criminal? After all, why not? After
all, who more likely if criminal there was, since Boris
Waberski thought himself an inheritor under Mrs. Har-
lowe's will?
"I am wondering whether he was not doing that very
thing which he attributed to you, Mademoiselle Betty,"
Hanaud continued.
"Paying?" Betty cried.
"Paying—or making excuses for not paying, which
is more probable, or recovering the poison arrow now
clean of its poison, which is most probable pf all."
At last Hanaud had made an end of his secrecies and
reticence. His suspicion, winged like the arrow in the
plate, was flying straight to this evident mark. Jim drew
a breath like a man waking from a nightmare; in all of
that small company a relaxation was visible; Ann Upcott
drew away from the table; Betty said softly as though
speaking to herself, "Monsieur Boris! Monsieur Boris!
Oh, I never thought of that!" and, to Jim's admiration
there was actually a note of regret in her voice.
99


The House of the Arrow
It was audible, too, to Hanaud, since he answered with
a smile:
"But you must bring yourself to think of it, Mademoi-
selle. After all, he was not so gentle with you that you
need show him so much good will."
A slight rush of colour tinged Betty's cheeks. Jim
was not quite sure that a tiny accent of irony had not
pointed Hanaud's words.
"I saw him sitting here," she replied quickly, "half an
hour ago—abject—in tears—a man!" She shrugged her
shoulders with a gesture of distaste. "I wish him noth-
ing worse. I was satisfied."
Hanaud smiled again with a curious amusement, an
appreciation which Frobisher was quite at a loss to un-
derstand. But he had from time to time received an
uneasy impression that a queer little secret duel was all
this while being fought by Betty Harlowe and Hanaud
underneath the smooth surface of questions and answers
—a duel in which now one, now the other of the com-
batants got some trifling scratch. This time it seemed
Betty was hurt.
"You are satisfied, Mademoiselle, but the Law is not,"
Hanaud returned. "Boris Waberski expected a legacy.
Boris Waberski needed money immediately, as the first
of the two letters which he wrote to Monsieur Frobisher's
firm clearly shows. Boris Waberski had a motive." He
looked from one to the other of his audience with a nod
to drive the point home. "Motives, no doubt, are sign-
posts rather difficult to read, and if one reads them amiss,
they lead one very wide astray. Granted! But you
must look for your signposts all the same and try to read
them aright. Listen again to the Professor of Medicine
in the University of Edinburgh! He is as precise as a
man can be."
Hanaud's eyes fell again upon the description of
Figure F in the treatise still open upon the table in front
of him.
"The arrow was the best specimen of a poison arrow
100


The Book
which he had ever come across. The poison paste was
thickly and smoothly spread over the arrow head and
some inches of the shaft. The arrow was unused and the
poison fresh, and these poisons retain their energy for
many, many years.; I tell you that if this book and this
arrow were handed over to Jean Cladel, Herbalist, Jean
Cladel could with ease make a solution in alcohol which
injected froni a hypodermic needle, would cause death
within fifteen minutes and leave not one trace."
"Within fifteen minutes?" Betty asked incredulously,
and from the arm-chair against the wall, where Ann
Upcott had once more seated herself, there broke a
startled exclamation.
"Oh!" she cried, but no one took any notice of her
at all. Both Jim and Betty had their eyes fixed upon
Hanaud, and he was altogether occupied in driving his
argument home.
"Within fifteen minutes? How do you know?" cried
Jim.
"It is written here, in the book."
"And where would Jean Cladel have learnt to handle
the paste with safety, how to prepare the solution?" Jim
went on.
"Here! Here! Here!" answered Hanaud, tapping
with his knuckles upon the treatise. "It is all written
out here—experiment after experiment made upon living
animals and the action of the poison measured and regis-
tered by minutes. Oh, given a man with a working
knowledge of chemicals such as Jean Cladel must possess,
and the result is certain."
Betty Harlowe leaned forward again over the book and
Hanaud turned it half round between them, so that both,
by craning their heads, could read. He turned the pages
back to the beginning and passed them quickly in review.
"See, Mademoiselle, the time tables. Strophanthus
constricts the muscles of the heart like digitalis, only much
more violently, much more swiftly. See the contractions
of the heart noted down minute after minute, until the
101


The House of the Arrow
moment of death and all—here is the irony!—so that by
means of these experiments, the poison may be trans-
formed into a medicine and the weapon of death become
an agent of life—as in good hands, it has happened."
Hanaud leaned back and contemplated Betty Harlowe be-
tween his half-closed eyes. "That is wonderful, Made-
moiselle. What do you think?"
Betty slowly closed the book.
"I think, Monsieur Hanaud," she said, "it is no less
wonderful that you should have studied this book so thor-
oughly during the half-hour you waited for us here this
morning."
It was Hanaud's turn to change colour. The blood
mounted into his face. He was for a second or two quite
disconcerted. Jim once more had a glimpse of the secret
duel and rejoiced that this time it was Hanaud, the great
Hanaud, who was scratched.
"The study of poisons is particularly my work," he
answered shortly. "Even at the Surete we have to spe-
cialise nowadays," and he turned rather quickly towards
Frobisher. "You are thoughtful, Monsieur?"
Jim was following out his own train of thought.
"Yes," he answered. Then he spoke to Betty.
"Boris Waberski had a latch-key, I suppose?"
"Yes," she replied.
"He took it away with him?"
"I think so."
"When are the iron gates locked?"
"It is the last thing Gaston does before he goes to bed."
Jim's satisfaction increased with every answer he re-
ceived.
"You see, Monsieur Hanaud," he cried, "all this while
we have been leaving out a question of importance. Who
put this book back upon its shelf? And when? Yester-
day at noon the space was empty. This morning it is
filled. Who filled it? Last night we sat in the garden
after dinner behind the house. What could have been
easier than for Waberski to slip in with his latch-key at
102


The Book
some moment when the court was empty, replace the book
and slip out again unnoticed? Why"
A gesture of Betty's brought him to a halt.
"Unnoticed? Impossible!" she said bitterly. "The
police have a sergent-de-ville at our gates, night and day."
Hanaud shook his head.
"He is there no longer. After you were good enough
to answer me so frankly yesterday morning the questions
it was my duty to put to you, I had him removed at
once."
"Why, that's true," Jim exclaimed joyfully. He re-
membered now that when he had driven up with his lug-
gage from the hotel in the afternoon, the street of
Charles-Robert had been quite empty. Betty Harlowe
stood taken aback by her surprise. Then a smile made
her face friendly; her eyes danced to the smile, and she
dipped to the detective a little mock curtsy. But her voice
was warm with gratitude.
"I thank you, Monsieur. I did not notice yesterday
that the man had been removed, or I should have thanked
you before. Indeed I was not looking for so much con-
sideration at your hands. As I told my friend Jim, I be-
lieved that you went away thinking me guilty."
Hanaud raised a hand in protest. To Jim it was the
flourish of the sword with which the duellist saluted at
the end of the bout. The little secret combat between
these two was over. Hanaud, by removing the sergeant
from before the gates, had given a sign surely not only
to Betty but to all Dijon that he found nothing to justify
any surveillance of her goings out and comings in, or
any limitations upon her freedom.
"Then you see," Jim insisted. He was still worrying at
his solution of the case like a dog with a bone. "You
see Waberski had the road clear for him last night."
Betty, however, would not have it. She shook her head
vigorously.
"I won't believe that Monsieur Boris is guilty of so
horrible a murder. More," and she turned her great eyes
103


The Booh
greed! What are they but good qualities developed be-
yond the bounds? Things at the beginning good and
since grown monstrous! So, too, in the execution. This
or that habit of life makes natural this or that weapon
which to us is hideous and abnormal and its mere use a
sign of a dreadful depravity. Yes, I recognise these
palliations. But there is one crime I never will forgive
—murder by poison. And one criminal in whose pursuit
I will never tire nor slacken, the Poisoner." Through the
words there ran a real thrill of hatred, and though
Hanaud's voice was low, and he never once raised his
eyes from the table, he held the three who listened to him
in a dreadful spell.
"Cowardly and secret, the poisoner has his little world
at his mercy, and a fine sort of mercy he shows to be
sure," he continued bitterly. "His hideous work is so
easy. It just becomes a vice like drink, no more than
that to the poisoner, but with a thousand times the pleas-
ure drink can give. Like the practice of some abominable
art. I tell you the truth now! Show me one victim to-
day and the poisoner scot-free, and I'll show you an-
other victim before the year's out. Make no mistake!
Make no mistake!"
His voice rang out and died away. But the words
seemed still to vibrate in the air of that room, to strike
the walls and rebound from them and still be audible.
Jim Frobisher, for all his slow imagination, felt that had
a poisoner been present and heard them, some cry of
guilt must have rent the silence and betrayed him. His
heart stopped in its beats listening for a cry, though his
reason told him there was no mouth in that room from
which the cry could come.
Hanaud looked up at Betty when he had finished. He
begged her pardon with a little flutter of his hands and a
regretful smile. "You must take me, therefore, as God
made me, Mademoiselle, and not blame me more than
you can help for the distress I still must cause you.
There was never a case more difficult. Therefore never
105


The House of the Arrow
one about which one way or the other I must be more
sure."
Before Betty could reply there came a knock upon the
door.
"Come in," Hanaud cried out, and a small, dark, alert
man in plain clothes entered the room.
"This is Nicolas Moreau, who was keeping watch in
the courtyard. I sent him some while ago upon an
errand," he explained and turned again to Moreau.
"Well, Nicolas?"
Nicolas stood at attention, with his hands at the seams
of his trousers, in spite of his plain clothes, and he recited
rather than spoke in a perfectly expressionless official
voice.
"In accordance with instructions I went to the shop
of Jean Cladel. It is number seven. From the Rue
Gambetta I went to the Prefecture. I verified your state-
ment. Jean Cladel has twice appeared before the Police
Correctionelle for selling forbidden drugs and has twice
been acquitted owing to the absence of necessary wit-
nesses."
"Thank you, Nicolas."
Moreau saluted, turned on his heel, and went out of
the room. There followed a moment of silence, of dis-
couragement. Hanaud looked ruefully at Betty.
"You see! I must go on. We must search in that
locked cabinet of Simon Harlowe's for the poison arrow,
if by chance it should be there."
"The room is sealed," Frobisher reminded him.
"We must have those seals removed," he replied, and
he took his watch from his pocket and screwed up his
face in grimace.
"We need Monsieur the Commissary, and Monsieur the
Commissary will not be in a good humour if we disturb
him now. For it is twelve o'clock, the sacred hour of
luncheon. You will have observed upon the stage that
Commissaries of Police are never in a good humour. It
is because "But Hanaud's audience was never to
106


The Book
hear his explanation of this well-known fact. For he
stopped with a queer jerk of his voice, his watch still
dangling from his fingers upon its chain. Both Jim and
Betty looked at once where he was looking. They saw
Ann Upcott standing up against the wall with her hand
upon the top rail of a chair to prevent herself from
falling. Her eyes were closed, her whole face a mask
of misery. Hanaud was at her side in a moment.
"Mademoiselle," he asked with a breathless sort of
eagerness, "what is it you have to tell me?"
"It is true, then?" she whispered. "Jean Cladel
exists?"
"Yes."
"And the poison arrow could have been used?" she
faltered, and the next words would not be spoken, but
were spoken at the last. "And death would have fol-
lowed in fifteen minutes?"
"Upon my oath it is true," Hanaud insisted. "What
is it you have to tell me?"
"That I could have hindered it all. I shall never for-
give myself. I could have hindered the murder."
Hanaud's eyes narrowed as he watched the girl. Was
he disappointed, Frobisher wondered? Did he expect
quite another reply? A swift movement by Betty dis-
tracted him from these questions. He saw Betty looking
across the room at them with the strangest glittering eyes
he had ever seen. And then Ann Upcott drew herself
away from Hanaud and stood up against the wall at her
full height with her arms outstretched. She seemed to
be setting herself apart as a pariah; her whole attitude
and posture cried, "Stone me! I am waiting."
Hanaud put his watch into his pocket.
"Mademoiselle, we will let the Commissary eat his
luncheon in peace, and we will hear your story first. But
not here. In the garden under the shade of the trees."
He took his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "In-
deed I too feel the heat. This room is as hot as an
oven."
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chapter nine: The Secret
THE garden chairs were already set out upon a lawn
towards the farther end of the garden in the shadow
of the great trees. Hanaud led the way towards them.
"We shall be in the cool here and with no one to over-
hear us but the birds," he said, and he patted and ar-
ranged the cushions in a deep arm-chair of basket work
for Ann Upcott. Jim Frobisher was reminded again of
the solicitude of a doctor with an invalid and again the
parallel jarred upon him. But he was getting a clearer
insight into the character of this implacable being. The
little courtesies and attentions were not assumed. They
were natural, but they would not hinder him for a mo-
ment in his pursuit. He would arrange the cushions with
the swift deft hands of a nurse—yes, but he would slip
the handcuffs on the wrists of his invalid, a moment after-
wards, no less deftly and swiftly, if thus his duty
prompted him.
"There!" he said. "Now, Mademoiselle, you are com-
fortable. For me, if I am permitted, I shall smoke."
He turned round to ask for permission of Betty, who
with Jim had followed into the garden behind him.
"Of course," she answered; and coming forward, she
sat down in another of the chairs.
Hanaud pulled out of a pocket a bright blue bundle of
thin black cigarettes and lit one. Then he sat in a chair
close to the two girls. Jim Frobisher stood behind
Hanaud. The lawn was dappled with sunlight and cool
shadows. The blackbird and the thrush were calling from
bough and bush, the garden was riotous with roses and
the air sweet with their perfume. It was a strange set-
ting for the eerie story which Ann Upcott had to tell of
her adventures in the darkness and silence of a night; but
109


The Secret
"Yes. I had a letter to write," Ann continued, and
suddenly faltered. She had come upon some obstacle in
the telling of her story which she had forgotten when
she had uttered her cry in the library. She gasped.
"Oh!" she murmured, and again "Oh!" in a low voice.
She glanced anxiously at Betty, but she got no help from
her at all. Betty was leaning forward with her elbows
upon her knees and her eyes on the grass at her feet and
apparently miles away in thought.
"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud asked smoothly.
"It was an important letter," Ann went on again,
choosing her words warily, much as yesterday at one
moment in her interrogatory Betty herself had done—
concealing something, too, just as Betty had done. "I
had promised faithfully to write it. But the address was
downstairs in Betty's room. It was the address of a
doctor," and having said that, it seemed that she had
cleared her obstacle, for she went on in a more easy and
natural tone.
"You know what it is, Monsieur Hanaud. I had been
playing tennis all the afternoon. I was pleasantly tired.
There was a letter to be written with a good deal of care
and the address was all the way downstairs. I said to
myself that I would think out the terms of my letter
first."
And here Jim Frobisher, who had been shifting impa-
tiently from one foot to the other, broke in upon the
narrative.
"But what was this letter about and to what doctor?"
he asked.
Hanaud swung round almost angrily.
"Oh, please!" he cried. "These things will all come to
light of themselves in their due order, if we leave them
alone and keep them in our memories. Let Mademoi-
selle tell her story in her own way," and he was back at
Ann Upcott again in a flash.
"Yes, Mademoiselle. You determined to think out the
tenor of your letter."
Ill


The Home of the Arrow
A hint of a smile glimmered upon the girl's face for a
second. "But it was an excuse really, an excuse to sit
down in my big arm-chair, stretch out my legs and do
nothing at all. You can guess what happened."
Hanaud smiled and nodded.
"You fell fast asleep. Conscience does not keep young
people, who are healthy and tired, awake," he said.
"No, but it wakes up with them," Ann returned, "and
upbraids at once bitterly. I woke up rather chilly, as
people do who have gone to sleep in their chairs. I was
wearing a little thin frock of pale blue tulle—oh, a feather-
weight of a frock! Yes, I was cold and my conscience
was saying, 'Oh, big lazy one! And your letter? Where
is it?'
"In a moment I was standing up and the next I was
out of the room on the landing, and I was still half dazed
with sleep. I closed my door behind me. It was just
chance that I did it. The lights were all out on the
staircase and in the hall below. The curtains were drawn
across the windows. There was no moon that night. I
was in a darkness so complete that I could not see the
glimmer of my hand when I raised it close before my
face."
Hanaud let the end of his cigarette drop at his feet.
Betty had raised her face and was staring at Ann with
her mouth parted. For all of them the garden had dis-
appeared with its sunlight and its roses and its singing
birds. They were upon that staircase with Ann Upcott
in the black night. The swift changes of colour in her
cheeks and of expression in her eyes—the nervous vivid-
ness of her compelled them to follow with her.
"Yes, Mademoiselle?" said Hanaud quietly.
"The darkness didn't matter to me," she went on, with
an amazement at her own fearlessness, now that she
knew the after-history of that evening. "I am afraid
now. I wasn't then," and Jim remembered how the night
before in the garden her eyes had shifted from this dark
spot to that in search of an intruder. Certainly she was
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The Secret
afraid now! Her hands were clenched tight upon the
arms of her chair, her lips shook.
"I knew every tread of the stairs. My hand was on
the balustrade. There was no sound. It never occurred
to me that any one was awake except myself. I did
not even turn on the light in the hall by the switch at
the bottom of the stairs. I knew that there was a switch
just inside the door of Betty's room, and that was enough.
I think, too, that I didn't want to rouse anybody. At the
foot of the stairs I turned right like a soldier. Exactly
opposite to me across the hall was the door of Betty's
room. I crossed the hall with my hands out in front of
me," and Betty, as though she herself were crossing the
hall, suddenly thrust both her hands out in front of her.
"Yes, one would have to do that," she said slowly. "In
the dark—with nothing but space in front of one
Yes!" and then she smiled as she saw that Hanaud's eyes
were watching her curiously. "Don't you think so, Mon-
sieur Hanaud?"
"No doubt," said he. "But let us not interrupt Made-
moiselle."
"I touched the wall first," Ann resumed, "just at the
angle of the corridor and the hall."
"The corridor with the windows on to the courtyard
on the one side and the doors of the receptions on the
other?" Hanaud asked.
"Yes."
"Were the curtains drawn across all those windows too,
Mademoiselle?"
"Yes. There was not a glimmer of light anywhere. I
felt my way along the wall to my right—that is, in the
hall, of course, not the corridor—until my hands slipped
off the surface and touched nothing. I had reached the
embrasure of the doorway. I felt for the door-knob,
turned it and entered the room. The light switch was in
the wall at the side of the door, close to my left hand. I
snapped it down. I think that I was still half asleep when
I turned the light on in the treasure-room, as we called
A
113


The Secret
"I cannot remember. We were all in great trouble.
There was so much to do. I did not notice."
"No. Indeed why should you?" said Hanaud. He
turned back to Ann. "Before you go on with this curious
story, Mademoiselle, tell me this! Was the light beyond
the open door, a light in the dressing-room or in the room
beyond the dressing-room, Madame Harlowe's bedroom,
or didn't you notice?"
"In the far room, I think," Ann answered confidently.
"There would have been more light in the treasure-room
otherwise. The treasure-room is long no doubt, but
where I stood I was completely in darkness. There was
only this panel of yellow light in the open doorway. It
lay in a band straight across the carpet and it lit up the
sedan chair opposite the doorway until it all glistened
like silver."
"Oho, there is a sedan chair in that museum?" said
Hanaud lightly. "It will be interesting to see. So the
light, Mademoiselle, came from the far room?"
"The light and—and the voices," said Ann with a
quaver in her throat.
"Voices!" cried Hanaud. He sat up straight in his
chair, whilst Betty Harlowe went as white as a ghost.
"Voices! What is this? Did you recognise those
voices?"
"One, Madame's. There was no mistaking it. It was
loud and violent for a moment. Then it went off into
a mumble of groans. The other voice only spoke once
and very few words and very clearly. But it spoke in
a whisper. There was too a sound of—movements."
"Movements!" said Hanaud sharply; and with his
voice his face seemed to sharpen too. "Here's a word
which does not help us much. A procession moves. So
does the chair if I push it. So does my hand if I cover
a mouth and stop a cry. Is it that sort of movement you
mean, Mademoiselle?"
Under the stern insistence of his questions Ann Upcott
suddenly weakened.
115


The House of the Arrow
"Oh, I am afraid so," she said with a loud cry, and she
clapped her hands to her face. "I never understood until
this morning when you spoke of how the arrow might
be used. Oh, I shall never forgive myself. I stood in
the darkness, a few yards away—no more—I stood quite
still and listened and just beyond the lighted doorway
Madame was being killed!" She drew her hands from
her face and beat upon her knees with her clenched fists
in a frenzy.
"'Yes, I believe that now!' Madame cried in the hoarse,
harsh voice we knew: 'Stripped, eh? Stripped to the
skin!' and she laughed wildly; and then came the sound,
as though—yes, it might have been that!—as though she
were forced down and held, and Madame's voice died to
a mumble and then silence—and then the other voice in a
low clear whisper, 'That will do now.' And all the
while I stood in the darkness—oh!"
"What did you do after that clear whisper reached your
ears?" Hanaud commanded. "Take your hands from
your face, if you please, and let me hear."
Ann Upcott obeyed him. She flung her head back with
the tears streaming down her face.
"I turned," she whispered. "I went out of the room.
I closed the door behind me—oh, ever so gently. I
fled."
"Fled? Fled? Whereto?"
"Up the stairs! To my room."
"And you rang no bell? You roused no one? You
fled to your room! You hid your head under the bed-
clothes like a child! Come, come, Mademoiselle!"
Hanaud broke off his savage irony to ask,
"And whose voice did you think it was that whispered
so clearly, 'That will do now?' The stranger's you spoke
of in the library this morning?"
"No, Monsieur," Ann replied. "I could not tell. With
a whisper one voice is like another."
"But you must have given that voice an owner. To
run away and hide—no one would do that."
116


The Secret
"I thought it was Jeanne Baudin's."
And Hanaud sat back in his chair again, gazing at
the girl with a look in which there was as much horror as
incredulity. Jim Frobisher stood behind him ashamed
of his very race. Could there be a more transparent sub-
terfuge? If she thought that the nurse Jeanne Baudin
was in the bedroom, why did she turn and fly?
"Come, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud. His voice had
suddenly become gentle, almost pleading. "You will not
make me believe that."
Ann Upcott turned with a helpless gesture towards
Betty.
"You see!" she said.
"Yes," Betty answered. She sat in doubt for a second
or two and then sprang to her feet.
"Wait!" she said, and before any one could have
stopped her she was skimming half-way across the garden
to the house. Jim Frobisher wondered whether Hanaud
had meant to stop her and then had given up the idea as
quite out of the question. Certainly he had made some
small quick movement; and even now, he watched Betty's
flight across the broad lawn between the roses with an
inscrutable queer look.
"To run like that!" he said to Frobisher, "with a boy's
nimbleness and a girl's grace! It is pretty, eh? The long
slim legs that twinkle, the body that floats!" and Betty
ran up the stone steps into the house.
There was a tension in Hanaud's attitude with which
his light words did not agree, and he watched the blank
windows of the house with expectancy. Betty, however,
was hardly a minute upon her errand. She reappeared
upon the steps with a largish envelope in her hand and
quickly rejoined the group.
"Monsieur, we have tried to keep this back from you,"
she said, without bitterness but with a deep regret. "I
yesterday, Ann to-day, just as we have tried for many
years to keep it from all Dijon. But there is no help for
it now."
117


The House of the Arrow
She opened the envelope and, taking out a cabinet
photograph, handed it to Hanaud.
"This is the portrait of Madame, my aunt, at the time
of her marriage with my uncle."
It was the three-quarter length portrait of a woman,
slender with the straight carriage of youth, in whose face
a look of character had replaced youth's prettiness. It
was a face made spiritual by suffering, the eyes shadowed
and wistful, the mouth tender, and conveying even in the
hard medium of a photograph some whimsical sense of
humour. It made Jim Frobisher, gazing over Hanaud's
shoulder, exclaim not "She was beautiful," but "I would
like to have known her."
"Yes! A companion," Hanaud added.
Betty took a second photograph from the envelope.
"But this, Monsieur, is the same lady a year ago."
The second photograph had been taken at Monte Carlo,
and it was difficult to believe that it was of the same
woman, so tragic a change had taken place within those
ten years. Hanaud held the portraits side by side. The
grace, the suggestion of humour had all gone; the figure
had grown broad, the features coarse and heavy; the
cheeks had fattened, the lips were pendulous; and there
was nothing but violence in the eyes. It was a dreadful
picture of collapse.
"It is best to be precise, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud
gently, "though these photographs tell their unhappy story
clearly enough. Madame Harlowe, during the last years
of her life, drank?"
"Since my uncle's death," Betty explained. "Her life,
as very likely you know already, had been rather miser-
able and lonely before she married him. But she had a
dream then on which to live. After Simon Harlowe died,
however "and she ended her explanation with a
gesture.
"Yes," Hanaud replied, "of course, Mademoiselle, we
have known, Monsieur Frobisher and I, ever since we
came into this affair that there was some secret. We
118


The Secret
knew it before your reticence of yesterday or Mademoi-
selle Upcott's of to-day. Waberski must have known of
something which you would not care to have exposed be-
fore he threatened your lawyers in London, or brought
his charges against you."
"Yes, he knew and the doctors and the servants of
course who were very loyal. We did our best to keep
our secret but we could never be sure that we had suc-
ceeded."
A friendly smile broadened Hanaud's face.
"Well, we can make sure now and here," he said, and
both the girls and Jim stared at him.
"How?" they exclaimed in an incredulous voice.
Hanaud beamed. He held them in suspense. He
spread out his hands. The artist as he would have said,
the mountebank as Jim Frobisher would have expressed
it, had got the upper hand in him, and prepared his
effect.
"By answering me one simple question," he said.
"Have either of you two ladies received an anonymous
letter upon the subject?"
The test took them all by surprise; yet each one of
them recognised immediately that they could hardly have
a better. All the secrets of the town had been exploited
at one time or another by this unknown person or group
of persons—all the secrets that is, except this one of
Mrs. Harlowe's degradation. For Betty answered,
"No! I never received one."
"Nor I," added Ann.
"Then your secret is your secret still," said Hanaud.
"For how long now?" Betty asked quickly, and Hanaud
did not answer a word. He could make no promise with-
out being false to what he had called his creed.
"It is a pity," said Betty wistfully. "We have striven
so hard, Ann and I," and she gave to the two men a
glimpse of the life the two girls had led in the Maison
Grenelle. "We could do very little. We had neither of
us any authority. We were both of us dependent upon
119


The Secret
and the young sentinels receive their reward for their close
watch. But Hanaud sat down again in his chair, and
once more turned towards Ann Upcott. He meant to go
on then. He would not leave well alone. Jim was all
the more disappointed, because he could not but realise
that the case was more and more clearly building itself
from something unsubstantial into something solid, from
a conjecture to an argument—this case against some one.
121


chapter ten: The Clock upon the
Cabinet
A NN UPCOTT'S story was in the light of this new
ness, she had heard, as she thought, Mrs. Harlowe in one
of her violent outbreaks. Then with a sense of relief she
had understood that Jeanne Baudin the nurse was with
Mrs. Harlowe, controlling and restraining her and finally
administering some sedative. She had heard the outcries
diminish and cease and a final whisper from the nurse to
her patient or even perhaps to herself, "That will do
now." Then she had turned and fled, taking care to at-
tract no attention to herself. Real cowardice had nothing
to do with her flight. The crisis was over. Her inter-
vention, which before would only have been a provocation
to a wilder outburst on the part of Mrs. Harlowe, was
now altogether without excuse. It would once more have
aroused the invalid, and next day would have added to
the discomfort and awkwardness of life in the Maison
Grenelle. For Mrs. Harlowe sober would have known
that Ann had been a witness of one more of her dreadful
exhibitions. The best thing which Ann could do, she did,
given that her interpretation of the scene was the true one.
She ran noiselessly back in the darkness to her room.
"Yes," said Hanaud. "But you believe now that your
interpretation was not correct. You believe now that
whilst you stood in the darkness with the door open and
the light beyond, Madame Harlowe was being murdered,
coldly and cruelly murdered a few feet away from you."
Ann Upcott shivered from head to foot.
"I don't want to believe it," she cried. "It's too hor-
rible."
"You believe now that the one who whispered 'That

Standing in the dark-
122


The Clock upon the Cabinet
will do now,' was not Jeanne Baudin," Hanaud insisted,
"but some unknown person, and that the whisper was
uttered after murder had been done to a third person
in that room."
Ann twisted her body from this side to that; she wrung
her hands.
"I am afraid of it!" she moaned.
"And what is torturing you now, Mademoiselle, is
remorse that you did not step silently forward and from
the darkness of the treasure-room look through that
lighted doorway." He spoke with a great consideration
and his insight into her distress was in its way a solace
to her.
"Yes," she exclaimed eagerly. "I told you this morn-
ing I could have hindered it. I didn't understand until
this morning. You see, that night something else hap-
pened"; and now indeed stark fear drew the colour from
her cheeks and shone in her eyes.
"Something else?" Betty asked with a quick indraw of
her breath, and she shifted her chair a little so that she
might face Ann. She was wearing a black coat over a
white silk shirt open at the throat, and she took her hand-
kerchief from a side pocket of the coat and drew it across
her forehead. s
"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud explained. "It is clear
that something else happened that night to your friend,
something which, taken together with our talk this morn-
ing over the book of arrows, had made her believe that
murder was done." He looked at Ann. "You went
then to your room?"
Ann resumed her story.
"I went to bed. I was very—what shall I say?—dis-
turbed by Madame's outburst, as I thought it. One
never knew what was going to happen in this house. It
was on my nerves. For a time I tumbled from side to
side in my bed. I was in a fever. Then suddenly I was
asleep, sound asleep. But only for a time. I woke up
and it was still pitch dark in my room. There was not
123


The House of the Arrow
a thread of light from the shutters. I turned over from
my side on to my back and I stretched out my arms
above my head. As God is my Judge I touched a
face "and even after all these days the terror of that
moment was so vivid and fresh to her that she shuddered
and a little sob broke from her lips. "A face quite close
to me bending over me, in silence. I drew my hands
away with a gasp. My heart was in my throat. I lay
just for a second or two dumb, paralysed. Then my
voice came back to me and I screamed."
It was the look of the girl as she told her story per-
haps more than the words she used; but something of her
terror spread like a contagion amongst her hearers. Jim
Frobisher's shoulders worked uneasily. Betty with her
big eyes wide open, her breath suspended, hung upon
Ann's narrative. Hanaud himself said:
"You screamed? I do not wonder."
"I knew that no one could hear me and that lying down
I was helpless," Ann continued. "I sprang out of bed
in a panic, and now I touched no one. I was so scared out
of my wits that I had lost all sense of direction. I
couldn't find the switch of the electric light. I stumbled
along a wall feeling with my hands. I heard myself
sobbing as though I was a stranger. At last I knocked
against a chest of drawers and came a little to myself.
I found my way then to the switch and turned on the
light. The room was empty. I tried to tell myself that
I had been dreaming, but I knew that the tale wasn't
true. Some one had been stealthily bending down close,
oh, so close over me in the darkness. My hand that had
touched the face seemed to tingle. I asked myself with
a shiver, what would have happened to me if just at that
moment I had not waked up? I stood and listened, but
the beating of my heart filled the whole room with noise.
I stole to the door and laid my ear against the panel. Oh,
I could easily have believed that one after another an
army was creeping on tiptoe past my door. At last I
made up my mind. I flung the door open wide. For a
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The Clock upon the Cabinet
moment I stood back from it, but once the door was
open I heard nothing. I stole out to the head of the
great staircase. Below me the hall was as silent as an
empty church. I think that I should have heard a spider
stir. I suddenly realised that the light was streaming
from my room and that some of it must reach me. I
cried at once, 'Who's there?' And then I ran back to my
room and locked myself in. I knew that I should sleep
no more that night. I ran to the windows and threw open
the shutters. The night had cleared, the stars were bright
in a clean black sky and there was a freshness of morn-
ing in the air. I had been, I should think, about five
minutes at the window when—you know perhaps, Mon-
sieur, how the clocks in Dijon clash out and take up the
hour from one another and pass it on to the hills—all of
them struck three. I stayed by the window until the
morning came."
After she had finished no one spoke for a little while.
Then Hanaud slowly lit another cigarette, looking now
upon the ground, now into the air, anywhere except at the
faces of his companions.
"So this alarming thing happened just before three
o'clock in the morning?" he asked gravely. "You are
very sure of that, I suppose? For, you see, it may be
of the utmost importance."
"I am quite sure, Monsieur," she said.
"And you have told this story to no one until this
moment?"
"To no one in the world," replied Ann. "The next
morning Madame Harlowe was found dead. There were
the arrangements for the funeral. Then came Monsieur
Boris's accusation. There were troubles enough in the
house without my adding to them. Besides, no one would
have believed my story of the face in the darkness; and
I didn't of course associate it then with the death of
Mrs. Harlowe."
"No," Hanaud agreed. "For you believed that death
to have been natural."
125


The House of the Arrow
"Yes, and I am not sure that it wasn't natural now,"
Ann protested. "But to-day I had to tell you this story,
Monsieur Hanaud"; and she leaned forward in her chair
and claimed his attention with her eyes, her face, every
tense muscle of her body. "Because if you are right and
murder was done in this house on the twenty-seventh, I
know the exact hour when it was done."
"Ah!"
Hanaud nodded his head once or twice slowly. He
gathered up his feet beneath him. His eyes glittered very
brightly as he looked at Ann. He gave Frobisher the
queer impression of an animal crouching to spring.
"The clock upon the marquetry cabinet," he said,
"against the middle of the wall in the treasure-room.
The white face of it and the hour which leapt at you
during that fraction of a second when your fingers were
on the switch."
"Yes," said Ann with a slow and quiet emphasis. "The
hour was half-past ten."
With that statement the tension was relaxed. Betty's
tightly-clenched hand opened and her trifle of a hand-
kerchief fluttered down on the grass. Hanaud changed
from that queer attitude of a crouching animal. Jim
Frobisher drew a great breath of relief.
"Yes, that is very important," said Hanaud.
"Important. I should think it was!" cried Jim.
For this was clear and proven to him. If murder had
been done on the night of the 27th of April, there was
just one person belonging to the household of the Maison
Grenelle who could have no share in it; and that one
person was his client, Betty Harlowe.
Betty was stooping to pick up her handkerchief when
Hanaud spoke to her; and she drew herself erect again
with a little jerk.
"Does that clock on the marquetry cabinet keep good
time, Mademoiselle?" he asked.
"Very good," she answered. "Monsieur Sabin the
watch-maker in the Rue de la Liberte has had it more
126


The House of the Arrow
"You wish to ask a question?" he said. "Well, Mon-
sieur, ask it if you wish. It is your right."
His manner added, what his voice left unsaid, "and
your responsibility." Jim hesitated. He could see no
harm in the question he proposed to ask. It was of vital
importance. Yet Hanaud stood in front of him with a
lowering face, daring him to put it. Jim did not doubt
any longer that Hanaud was quite aware of his point
and yet for some unknown reason objected to its dis-
closure. Jim yielded, but not with a very good grace.
"It is nothing," he said surlily, and Hanaud at once
was all cheerfulness again.
"Then we will adjourn," he said, looking at his watch.
"It is nearly one o'clock. Shall we say three for the
Commissary of Police? Yes? Then I shall inform him
and we will meet in the library at three and"—with a
little bow to Betty—"the interdict shall be raised."
"At three, then," she said gaily. She sprang up from
her chair, stooped, picked up her handkerchief with a
swift and supple movement, twirled upon her heel and
cried, "Come along, Ann!"
The four people moved off towards the house. Betty
looked back.
"You have left your gloves behind you on your chair,"
she said suddenly to Hanaud. Hanaud looked back.
"So I have," he said, and then in a voice of protest,
"Oh, Mademoiselle!"
For Betty had already darted back and now returned
dangling the gloves in her hand.
"Mademoiselle, how shall I thank you?" he asked as
he took them from her. Then he cocked his head at Fro-
bisher, who was looking a little stiff.
"Ha! ha! my young friend," he said with a grin. "You
do not like that so much kindness should be shown me.
No! You are looking very proper. You have the poker
in the back. But ask yourself this: 'What are youth
and good looks compared with Hanaud?'"
No, Jim Frobisher did not like Hanaud at all when
128


The Clock upon the Cabinet
the urchin got the upper hand in him. And the worst
of it was that he had no rejoinder. He flushed very
red, but he really had no rejoinder. They walked in
silence to the house, and Hanaud, picking up his hat and
stick, took his leave by the courtyard and the big gates.
Ann drifted into the library. Jim felt a touch upon his
arm. Betty was standing beside him with a smile of
amusement upon her face.
"You didn't really mind my going back for his gloves,
did you?" she asked. "Say you didn't, Jim!" and the
amusement softened into tenderness. "I wouldn't have
done it for worlds if I had thought you'd have minded."
Jim's ill-humour vanished like mist on a summer morn-
ing.
"Mind?" he cried. "You shall pin a rose in his button-
hole if it pleases you, and all I'll say will be, 'You might
do the same for me'!"
Betty laughed and gave his arm a friendly squeeze.
"We are friends again, then," she said, and the next
moment she was out on the steps under the glass face of
the porch. "Lunch at two, Ann!" she cried. "I must
walk all the grime of this morning out of my brain."
She was too quick and elusive for Jim Frobisher. She
had something of Ariel in her conception—a delicate crea-
ture of fire and spirit and air. She was across the court-
yard and out of sight in the street of Charles-Robert
before he had quite realised that she was going. He
turned doubtfully towards the library, where Ann Upcott
stood in the doorway.
"I had better follow her," he said, reaching for his hat
.
Ann smiled and shook her head wisely.
"I shouldn't. I know Betty. She wants to be alone."
"Do you think so?"
"I am sure."
Jim twiddled his hat in his hands, not half as sure upon
the point as she was. Ann watched him with a rather
rueful smile for a little while. Then she shrugged her
shoulders in a sudden exasperation.
129


The House of the Arrow
"There is something you ought to do," she said. "You
ought to let Monsieur Bex, Betty's notary here, know that
the seals are to be broken this afternoon. He ought to be
here. He was here when they were affixed. Besides, he
has all the keys of Mrs. Harlowe's drawers and cup-
boards."
"That's true," Jim exclaimed. "I'll go at once."
Ann gave him Monsieur Bex's address in the Place
Etienne Dolet, and from the window of the library
watched him go upon his errand. She stood at the win-
dow for a long while after he had disappeared.
130


CHAPTER ELEVEN: A New Suspect
MONSIEUR BEX the notary came out into the hall
of his house when Frobisher sent his card in to
him. He was a small, brisk man with a neat pointed
beard, his hair cut en brosse and the corner of his napkin
tucked into his neck between the flaps of his collar.
Jim explained that the seals were to be removed from
the rooms of the Maison Grenelle, but said nothing at
all of the new developments which had begun with the
discovery of the book of the arrows.
"I have had communications with Messrs. Frobisher
and Haslitt," the little man exclaimed. "Everything has
been as correct as it could possibly be. I am happy to
meet a partner of so distinguished a firm. Yes. I will
certainly present myself at three with my keys and see
the end of this miserable scandal. It has been a dis-
grace. That young lady so delicious and so correct!
And that animal of a Waberski! But we can deal with
him. We have laws in France."
He gave Jim the impression that there were in his
opinion no laws anywhere else, and he bowed his visitor
into the street.
Jim returned by the Rue des Godrans and the main
thoroughfare of the town, the street of Liberty. As he
crossed the semicircle of the Place d'Armes in front of
the Hotel de Ville, he almost ran into Hanaud smoking a
cigar.
"You have lunched already?" he cried.
"An affair of a quarter of an hour," said Hanaud with
a wave of the hand. "And you?"
"Not until two. Miss Harlowe wanted a walk."
Hanaud smiled.
"How I understand that! The first walk after an
131


The House of the Arrow
ordeal! The first walk of a convalescent after an opera-
tion! The first walk of a defendant found innocent of
a grave charge! It must be worth taking, that walk.
But console yourself, my friend, for the postponement
of your luncheon. You have met me!" and he struck
something of an attitude.
Now Jim had the gravest objection to anything the-
atrical, especially when displayed in public places, and he
answered stiffly, "That is a pleasure, to be sure."
Hanaud grinned. To make Jim look "proper" was
becoming to him an unfailing entertainment.
"Now I reward you," he said, though for what Jim
could not imagine. "You shall come with me. At this
hour, on the top of old Philippe le Bon's Terrace Tower,
we shall have the world to ourselves."
He led the way into the great courtyard of the Hotel
de Ville. Behind the long wing which faced them, a
square, solid tower rose a hundred and fifty feet high
above the ground. With Frobisher at his heels, Hanaud
climbed the three hundred and sixteen steps and emerged
upon the roof into the blue and gold of a cloudless May
in France. They looked eastwards, and the beauty of
the scene took Frobisher's breath away. Just in front,
the slender apse of Notre Dame, fine as a lady's orna-
ment, set him wondering how in the world through all
these centuries it had endured; and beyond, rich and
green and wonderful, stretched the level plain with its
shining streams and nestling villages.
Hanaud sat down upon a stone bench and stretched out
his arm across the parapet. "Look!" he cried eagerly,
proudly. "There is what I brought you here to see.
Look!"
Jim looked and saw, and his face lit up. Far away on
the horizon's edge, unearthly in its beauty, hung the
great mass of Mont Blanc; white as silver, soft as velvet,
and here and there sparkling with gold as though the
flame of a fire leaped and sank.
"Oho!" said Hanaud as he watched Jim's face. "So
132


A New Suspect
"Ann UpcottI" Jim spoke the name in amazement.
"Ann Upcott!" Then he remembered the look of her
as she had told her story, her face convulsed with terror,
her shaking tones. "Oh, it's impossible that she was
lying. Surely no one could have so mimicked fear?"
Hanaud laughed.
"You may take this from me, my friend. All women
who are great criminals are also very artful actresses.
I never knew one who wasn't."
"Ann Upcott!" Jim Frobisher once more exclaimed,
but now with a trifle less of amazement. He was grow-
ing slowly and gradually accustomed to the idea. Still—.
that girl with the radiant look of young Spring! Oh, no!
"Ann Upcott was left nothing in Mrs. Harlowe's will,"
he argued. "What could she have to gain by murder?"
"Wait, my friend! Look carefully at her story!
Analyse it. You will see—what? That it falls into two
parts." Hanaud ground the stump of his cigar beneath
his heel, offered one of his black cigarettes to Jim Fro-
bisher and lighted one for himself. He lit it with a
sulphur match which Jim thought would never stop
fizzling, would never burst into flame.
"One part when she was alone in her bedroom—a little
story of terror and acted very effectively, but after all
any one could invent it. The other part was not so easy
to invent. The communicating door open for no reason,
the light beyond, the voice that whispered, 'That will do,'
the sound of the struggle! No, my friend, I don't be-
lieve that was invented. There were too many little de-
tails which seemed to have been lived through. The
white face of the clock and the hour leaping at her. No!
I think all that must stand. But adapt it a little. See!
This morning Waberski told us a story of the Street of
Gambetta and of Jean Cladel!"
"Yes," said Jim.
"And I asked you afterwards whether Waberski might
not be telling a true story of himself and attributing it
to Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
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The House of the Arrow
"Yes."
"Well, then, interpret Ann Upcott's story in the same
way," continued Hanaud. "Suppose that sometime that
day she had unlocked the communicating door! What
more easy? Madame Harlowe was up during the day-
time. Her room was empty. And that communicating
door opened not into Madame's bedroom, where perhaps
it might have been discovered whether it was locked or
not, but into a dressing-room."
"Yes," Jim agreed.
"Well then, continue! Ann Upcott is left alone after
Mademoiselle Harlowe's departure to Monsieur de Pouil-
lac's Ball. She sends Gaston to bed. The house is all
dark and asleep. Suppose then that she is joined by—
some one—some one with the arrow poison all ready in
the hypodermic needle. That they enter the treasure-
room just as Ann Upcott described. That she turns on
the light for a second whilst—some one—crosses the
treasure-room and opens the door. Suppose that the voice
which whispered, 'That will do now,' was the voice of Ann
Upcott herself and that she whispered it across Madame
Harlowe's body to the third person in that room !"*
"The 'some one,'" exclaimed Jim. "But, who then?
Who?"
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders. "Why not Waber-
ski?"
"Waberski?" cried Jim with a new excitement in his
voice.
"You asked me what had Ann Upcott to gain by this
murder and you answered your own question. Nothing
you said, Monsieur Frobisher, but did your quick answer
cover the ground? Waberski—he at all events expected
a fine fat legacy. What if he in return for help proposed
to share that fine fat legacy with the exquisite Made-
moiselle Ann. Has she no motive now? In the end what
do we know of her at all except that she is the paid com-
panion and therefore poor? Mademoiselle Ann!"; and
he threw up his hands. "Where does she spring from?
136


A New Suspect
How did she come into that house? Was she perhaps
Waberski's friend?"—and a cry from Jim brought Han-
aud to a stop.
Jim had thought of Waberski as the possible murderer
if murder had been done—a murderer who, disappointed
of his legacy, the profits of his murder, had carried on
his villainy to blackmail and a false accusation. But he
had not associated Ann Upcott with him until those
moments on the Terrace Tower. Yet now memories
began to crowd upon him. The letter to him, for instance.
She had said that Waberski had claimed her support and
ridiculed his claim. Might that letter not have been a blind
and a rather cunning blind? Above all there was a scene
passing vividly through his mind which was very different
from the scene spread out before his eyes, a scene of lighted
rooms and a crowd about a long green table, and a fair
slender girl seated at the table, who lost and lost until
the whole of her little pile of banknotes was swept in by
the croupier's rake, and then turned away with a high
carriage but a quivering lip.
"Aha!" said Hanaud keenly. "You know something
after all of Ann Upcott, my friend. What do you
know?"
Jim hesitated. At one moment it did not seem fair to
her that he should relate his story. Explained, it might
wear so different a complexion. At another moment that
it would be fairer to let her explain it. And there was
Betty to consider. Yes, above all there was Betty to con-
sider. He was in Dijon on her behalf.
"I will tell you," he said to Hanaud. "When I saw
you in Paris, I told you that I had never seen Ann Upcott
in all my life. I believed it. It wasn't until she danced
into the library yesterday morning that I realised I had
misled you. I saw Ann Upcott at the trente et quarante
table at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo in January of
this year. I sat next to her. She was quite alone and
losing her money. Nothing would go right for her. She
bore herself proudly and well. The only sign I saw of
137


The House of the Arrow
distress was the tightening of her fingers about her little
handbag, and a look of defiance thrown at the other play-
ers when she rose after her last coup, as though she dared
them to pity her. I was on the other hand winning, and
I slipped a thousand-franc note off the table on to the
floor, keeping my heel firmly upon it as you can under-
stand. And as the girl turned to move out from the
crowd I stopped her. I said in English, for she was
obviously of my race, 'This is yours. You have dropped
it on the floor.' She gave me a smile and a little shake of
the head. I think that for the moment she dared not trust
her lips to speak, and in a second, of course, she was
swallowed up in the crowd. I played for a little while
longer. Then I too rose and as I passed the entrance to
the bar on my way to get my coat, this girl rose up from
one of the many little tables and spoke to me. She called
me by my name. She thanked me very prettily and said
that although she had lost that evening she was not really
in any trouble. I doubted the truth of what she said. For
she had not one ring upon any finger, not the tiniest neck-
lace about her throat, not one ornament upon her dress
or in her hair. She turned away from me at once and
went back to the little table where she sat down again in
the company of a man. The girl of course was Ann
Upcott, the man Waberski. It was from him no doubt
that she had got my name."
"Did this little episode happen before Ann Upcott
became a member of the household?" Hanaud asked.
"Yes," replied Jim. "I think she joined Mrs. Har-
lowe and Betty at Monte Carlo. I think that she came
with them back to Dijon."
"No doubt," said Hanaud. He sat for a little while
in silence. Then he said softly, "That does not look so
very well for Mademoiselle Ann."
Jim had to admit that it did not.
"But consider this, Monsieur Hanaud," he urged. "If
Ann Upcott, which I will not believe, is mixed up in this
affair, why should she of her own free will volunteer this
138


A New Suspect
story of what she heard upon the night of the twenty-
seventh and invent that face which bent down over her
in the darkness?"
"I have an idea about that," Hanaud replied. "She
told us this story—when? After I had said that we must
have the seals broken this afternoon and the rooms thrown
open. It is possible that we may come upon something
in those rooms which makes it wise for her to divert sus-
picion upon some other woman in the house. Jeanne
Baudin, or even Mademoiselle Harlowe's maid Francine
Rollard."
"But not Mademoiselle Betty," Jim interposed quickly.
"No, no!" Hanaud returned with a wave of his hand.
"The clock upon the marquetry cabinet settled that.
Mademoiselle Betty is out of the affair. Well, this after-
noon we shall see. Meanwhile, my friend, you will be
late for your luncheon."
Hanaud rose from the bench and with a last look at the
magical mountain, that outpost of France, they turned
towards the city.
Jim Frobisher looked down upon tiny squares green
with limes and the steep gaily-patterned roofs of ancient
houses. About him the fine tapering spires leapt high
like lances from the slates of its many churches. A little
to the south and a quarter of a mile away across the roof
tops he saw the long ridge of a big house and the smoke
rising from a chimney stack or two and behind it the tops
of tall trees which rippled and shook the sunlight from
their leaves.
"The Maison Grenelle!" he said.
There was no answer, not even the slightest movement
at his side.
"Isn't it?" he asked and he turned.
Hanaud had not even heard him. He was gazing
also towards the Maison Grenelle with the queerest look
upon his face; a look with which Jim was familiar in
some sort of association, but which for a moment or two
he could not define. It was not an expression of amaze-
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The House of the Arrow
ment. On the other hand interest was too weak a word.
Suddenly Jim Frobisher understood and comprehension
brought with it a sense of discomfort. Hanaud's look,
very bright and watchful and more than a little inhuman,
was just the look of a good retriever dog when his master
brings out a gun.
Jim looked again at the high ridge of the house. The
slates were broken at intervals by little gabled windows,
but at none of them could he see a figure. From none of
them a signal was waved.
"What is it that you are looking at?" asked Jim in
perplexity and then with a touch of impatience. "You
see something, I'm sure."
Hanaud heard his companion at last. His face
changed in a moment, lost its rather savage vigilance, and
became the face of a buffoon.
"Of course I see something. Always I see something.
Am I not Hanaud? Ah, my friend, the responsibility of
being Hanaud! Aren't you fortunate to be without it?
Pity me! For the Hanauds must see something every-
where—even when there is nothing to see. Come!"
He bustled out of the sunlight on that high platform
into the dark turret of the staircase. The two men de-
scended the steps and came out again into the semi-circle
of the Place d'Armes.
"Well!" said Hanaud and then "Yes," as though he
had some little thing to say and was not quite sure
whether he would say it. Then he compromised. "You
shall take a Vermouth with me before you go to your
luncheon," he said.
"I should be late if I did," Frobisher replied.
Hanaud waved the objection aside with a shake of his
outstretched forefinger.
"You have plenty of time, Monsieur. You shall take
a Vermouth with me, and you will still reach the Maison
Grenelle before Mademoiselle Harlowe. I say that,
Hanaud," he said superbly, and Jim laughed and con-
sented.
140


A New Suspect
"I shall plead your vanity as my excuse when I find her
and Ann Upcott half through their meal."
A cafe stands at the corner of the street of Liberty and
the Place d'Armes, with two or three little tables set out
on the pavement beneath an awning. They sat down at
one of them, and over the Vermouth, Hanaud was once
more upon the brink of some recommendation or state-
ment.
"You see "he began and then once more ran away.
"So you have been five times upon the top of the Mont
Blanc!" he said. "From Chamonix?"
"Once," Jim replied. "Once from the Col du Geant
by the Brenva glacier. Once by the Dome route. Once
from the Brouillard glacier. And the last time by the
Mont Mandit."
Hanaud listened with genuine friendliness and said:
"You tell me things which are interesting and very
new to me," he said warmly. "I am grateful, Monsieur."
"On the other hand," Jim answered dryly, "you, Mon-
sieur, tell me very little. Even what you brought me to
this cafe to say, you are going to keep to yourself. But
for my part I shall not be so churlish. I am going to tell
you what I think."
"Yes?"
"I think we have missed the way."
"Oh?"
Hanaud selected a cigarette from his bundle in its
bright blue wrapping.
"You will perhaps think me presumptuous in say-
ing so."
"Not the least little bit in the world," Hanaud replied
seriously. "We of the Police are liable in searching
widely to overlook the truth under our noses. That is our
danger. Another angle of view—there is nothing more
precious. I am all attention."
Jim Frobisher drew his chair closer to the round table
of iron and leaned his elbows upon it.
"I think there is one question in particular which we
141


The House of the Arrow
must answer if we are to discover whether Mrs. Har-
lowe was murdered, and if so by whom."
Hanaud nodded.
"I agree," he said slowly. "But I wonder whether we
have the same question in our minds."
"It is a question which we have neglected. It is this—
Who put back the Professor's treatise on Sporanthus in
its place upon the bookshelf in the library, between mid-
day yesterday and this morning."
Hanaud struck another of his abominable matches, and
held it in the shelter of his palm until the flame shone.
He lit his cigarette and took a few puffs at it.
"No doubt that question is important," he admitted,
although in rather an off-hand way. "But it is not mine.
No. I think there is another more important still. I
think if we could know why the door of the treasure-
room, which had been locked since Simon Harlowe's
death, was unlocked on the night of the twenty-seventh
of April, we should be very near to the whole truth of this
dark affair. But," and he flung out his hands, "that
baffles me."
Jim left him sitting at the table and staring moodily
upon the pavement, as if he hoped to read the answer
there.
142


chapter twelve: The Breaking of the
Seals
AFEW minutes later Jim Frobisher had to admit that
Hanaud guessed very luckily. He would not allow
that it was more than a guess. Monsieur Hanaud might
be a thorough little Mr. Know-Ail; but no insight, how-
ever brilliant, could inform him of so accidental a circum-
stance. But there the fact was. Frobisher did arrive at
the Maison Grenelle, to his great discomfort, before Betty
Harlowe. He had loitered with Hanaud at the cafe just
so that this might not take place. He shrank from being
alone with Ann Upcott now that he suspected her. The
most he could hope to do was to conceal the reason of his
trouble. The trouble itself in her presence he could not
conceal. She made his case the more difficult perhaps by
a rather wistful expression of sympathy.
"You are distressed," she said gently. "But surely you
need not be any longer. What I said this morning was
true. It was half-past ten when that dreadful whisper
reached my ears. Betty was a mile away amongst her
friends in a ball-room. Nothing can shake that."
"It is not on her account that I am troubled," he cried,
and Ann looked at him with startled eyes.
Betty crossed the court and joined them in the hall
before Ann could ask a question; and throughout their
luncheon he made conversation upon indifferent subjects
with rapidity, if without entertainment.
Fortunately there was no time to spare. They were
still indeed smoking their cigarettes over their coffee when
Gaston informed them that the Commissary of Police
with his secretary was waiting in the library.
"This is Mr. Frobisher, my solicitor in London," said
Betty as she presented Jim.
143


The House of the Arrow
The Commissary, Monsieur Girardot, was a stout, bald,
middle-aged man with a pair of folding glasses sitting
upon a prominent fat nose; his secretary, Maurice
Thevenet, was a tall good-looking novice in the police
administration, a trifle flashy in his appearance, and in
his own esteem, one would gather, rather a conqueror
amongst the fair.
"I have asked Monsieur Bex, Mademoiselle's notary
in Dijon, to be present," said Jim.
"That is quite in order," replied the Commissary, and
Monsieur Bex was at that moment announced. He
came on the very moment of three. The clock was strik-
ing as he bowed in the doorway. Everything was just
as it should be. Monsieur Bex was pleased.
"With Monsieur le Commissaire's consent," he said,
smiling, "we can now proceed with the final ceremonies
of this affair."
"We wait for Monsieur Hanaud," said the Commis-
sary.
"Hanaud?"
"Hanaud of the Surete of Paris, who has been in-
vited by the Examining Magistrate to take charge of this
case," the Commissary explained.
"Case?" cried Monsieur Bex in perplexity. "But there
is no case for Hanaud to take charge of;" and Betty
Harlowe drew him a little aside.
Whilst she gave the little notary some rapid summary
of the incidents of the morning, Jim went out of the room
into the hall in search of Hanaud. He saw him at once;
but to his surprise Hanaud came forward from the back
of the hall as if he had entered the house from the garden.
"I sought you in the dining-room," he said, pointing to
the door of that room which certainly was at the back of
the house behind the library, with its entrance behind the
staircase. "We will join the others."
Hanaud was presented to Monsieur Bex.
"And this gentleman?" asked Hanaud, bowing slightly
to Thevenet.
144


The Breaking of the Seals
"My secretary, Maurice Thevenet," said the Commis-
sary, and in a loud undertone, "a charming youth, of an
intelligence which is surprising. He will go far."
Hanaud looked at Thevenet with a friendly interest.
The young recruit gazed at the great man with kindling
eyes.
"This will be an opportunity for me, Monsieur Hanaud,
by which, if I do not profit, I prove myself of no intelli-
gence at all," he said with a formal modesty which quite
went to the heart of Monsieur Bex.
"That is very correct," said he.
Hanaud for his part was never averse to flattery. He
cocked an eye at Jim Frobisher; he shook the secretary
warmly by the hand.
"Then don't hesitate to ask me questions, my young
friend," he answered. "I am Hanaud now, yes. But
I was once young Maurice Thevenet without, alas! his
good looks."
Maurice Thevenet blushed with the most becoming
diffidence.
"That is very kind," said Monsieur Bex.
"This looks like growing into a friendly little family
party," Jim Frobisher thought, and he quite welcomed a
"Hum" and a "Ha" from the Commissary.
He moved to the centre of the room.
"We, Girardot, Commissaire of Police, will now
remove the seals," he said pompously.
He led the way from the Library across the hall and
along the corridor to the wide door of Mrs. Harlowe's
bedroom. He broke the seals and removed the bands.
Then he took a key from the hand of his secretary and
opened the door upon a shuttered room. The little com-
pany of people surged forward. Hanaud stretched out
his arms and barred the way.
"Just for a moment, please!" he ordered and over his
shoulder Jim Frobisher had a glimpse of the room which
made him shiver.
This morning in the garden some thrill of the chase
145


The House of the Arrow
had made him for a moment eager that Hanaud should
press on, that development should follow upon develop-
ment until somewhere a criminal stood exposed. Since
the hour, however, which he had spent upon the Tower
of the Terrace, all thought of the chase appalled him and
he waited for developments in fear. This bedroom
mistily lit by a few stray threads of daylight which
pierced through the chinks of the shutters, cold and silent
and mysterious, was for him peopled with phantoms,
whose faces no one could see, who struggled dimly in
the shadows. Then Hanaud and the Commissary crossed
to the windows opposite, opened them and flung back the
shutters. The clear bright light flooded every corner in
an instant and brought to Jim Frobisher relief. The
room was swept and clean, the chairs ranged against the
wall, the bed flat and covered with an embroidered spread;
everywhere there was order; it was as empty of sugges-
tion as a vacant bedroom in an hotel.
Hanaud looked about him.
"Yes," he said. "This room stood open for a week
after Madame's funeral. It would have been a miracle if
we discovered anything which could help us."
He went to the bed, which stood with its head against
the wall midway between the door and the windows. A
small flat stand with a button of enamel lay upon the
round table by the bed-side, and from the stand a cord
ran down by the table leg and disappeared under the
carpet.
"This is the bell into what was the maid's bedroom, I
suppose," he said, turning towards Betty.
"Yes."
Hanaud stooped and minutely examined the cord. But
there was no sign that it had ever been tampered with.
He stood up again.
"Mademoiselle, will you take Monsieur Girardot into
Jeanne Baudin's bedroom and close the door. I shall
press this button, and you will know whether the bell rings
whilst we here shall be able to assure ourselves whether
146


The Breaking of the Seals
sounds made in one of the rooms would be heard in the
other."
"Certainly."
Betty took the Commissary of Police away, and a few
seconds later those in Mrs. Harlowe's room heard a door
close in the corridor.
"Will you shut our door now, if you please?" Hanaud
requested.
Bex, the notary, closed it.
"Now, silence, if you please!"
Hanaud pressed the button, and not a sound answered
him. He pressed it again and again with the same result.
The Commissary returned to the bedroom.
"Well?" Hanaud asked.
"It rang twice," said the Commissary.
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders with a laugh.
"And an electric bell has a shrill, penetrating sound,"
he cried. "Name of a name, but they built good houses
when the Maison Grenelle was built! Are the cupboards
and drawers open?"
He tried one and found it locked. Monsieur Bex came
forward.
"All the drawers were locked on the morning when
Madame Harlowe's death was discovered. Mademoiselle
Harlowe herself locked them in my presence and handed
to me the keys for the purpose of making an inventory.
Mademoiselle was altogether correct in so doing. For
until the funeral had taken place the terms of the will
were not disclosed."
"But afterwards, when you took the inventory you
must have unlocked them."
"I have not yet begun the inventory, Monsieur Hanaud.
There were the arrangements for the funeral, a list of the
properties to be made for valuation, and the vineyards to
be administered."
"Oho," cried Hanaud alertly. "Then these ward-
robes and cupboards and drawers should hold exactly
what they held on the night of the twenty-seventh of
147


The Home of the Arrow
April." He ran quickly about the room trying a door
here, a drawer there, and came to a stop beside a cup-
board fashioned in the thickness of the wall. "The
trouble is that a child with a bent wire could unlock any
one of them. Do you know what Madame Harlowe kept
in this, Monsieur Bex?" and Hanaud rapped with his
knuckles upon the cupboard door.
"No, I have no idea. Shall I open it?" and Bex pro-
duced a bunch of keys from his pocket.
"Not for the moment, I think," said Hanaud.
He had been dawdling over the locks and the drawers,
as though time meant nothing to him at all. He now
swung briskly back into the centre of the room, making
notes, it seemed to Frobisher, of its geography. The
door opening from the corridor faced, across the length
of the floor, the two tall windows above the garden. If
one stood in the doorway facing these two windows, the
bed was on the left hand. On the corridor side of the
bed, a second smaller door, which was half open, led to a
white-tiled bath-room. On the window side of the bed
was the cupboard in the wall about the height of a
woman's shoulders. A dressing-table stood between the
windows, a great fire-place broke the right-hand wall,
and in that same wall, close to the right-hand window,
there was yet another door. Hanaud moved to it.
"This is the door of the dressing-room?" he asked of
Ann Upcott, and without waiting for an answer pushed
it open.
Monsieur Bex followed upon his heels with his keys
rattling. "Everything here has been locked up too," he
said.
Hanaud paid not the slightest attention. He opened
the shutters.
It was a narrow room without any fire-place at all,
and with a door exactly opposite to the door by which
Hanaud had entered. Ha went at once to this door.
"And this must be the communicating door which
leads into what is called the treasure-room," he said, and
148


The Breaking of the Seals
he paused with his hand upon the knob and his eyes rang-
ing alertly over the faces of the company.
"Yes," said Ann Upcott.
Jim was conscious of a queer thrill. He thought of
the opening of some newly-discovered tomb of a Pharaoh
in a hill-side of the Valley of Kings. Suspense passed
from one to the other as they waited, but Hanaud did
not move. He stood there impassive and still like some
guardian image at the door of the tomb. Jim felt that
he was never going to move, and in a voice of exaspera-
tion he cried:
"Is the door locked?"
Hanaud replied in a quiet but a singular voice. No
doubt he, too, felt that strange current of emotion and
expectancy which bound all in the room under a spell,
and even gave to their diverse faces for a moment a kind
of family similitude.
"I don't know yet whether it's locked or not," he said.
"But since this room is now the private sitting-room of
Mademoiselle Harlowe, I think that we ought to wait
until she rejoins us."
Monsieur Bex just had time to remark with approval,
"That is very correct," before Betty's fresh, clear voice
rang out from the doorway leading to Mrs. Harlowe's
bedroom:
"I am here."
Hanaud turned the handle. The door was not locked.
It opened at a touch—inwards towards the group of
people and upwards towards the corridor. The treasure-
room was before them, shrouded in dim light, but here
and there a beam of light sparkled upon gold and held
out a promise of wonders. Hanaud picked his way
daintily to the windows and fastened the shutters back
against the outside wall. "I beg that nothing shall be
touched," he said as the others filed into the room.
149


CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SimOTl Harlowe's
Treasure-room
LIKE the rest of the reception-rooms along the corri-
dor, it was longer than it was broad and more of a
gallery than a room. But it had been arranged for habita-
tion rather than for occasional visits. For it was furnished
with a luxurious comfort and not over-crowded. In the
fawn-coloured panels of the walls a few exquisite pictures
by Fragonard had been framed; on the writing-table of
Chinese Chippendale by the window every appointment,
ink-stand, pen-tray, candlestick, sand-caster and all were
of the pink Battersea enamel and without a flaw. But
they were there for use, not for exhibition. Moreover
a prominent big fire-place in the middle of the wall on
the side of the hall, jutted out into the room and gave it
almost the appearance of two rooms in communication.
The one feature of the room, indeed, which at a first
glimpse betrayed the collector, was the Sedan chair set in
a recess of the wall by the fire-place and opposite to the
door communicating with Mrs. Harlowe's bedroom. Its
body was of a pale French grey in colour, with elaborately
carved mouldings in gold round the panels and medallions
representing fashionable shepherds and shepherdesses
daintily painted in the middle of them. It had glass win-
dows at the sides to show off the occupant, and it was
lined with pale grey satin, embroidered in gold to match
the colour of the panels. The roof, which could be raised
upon a hinge at the back, was ornamented with gold
filigree work, and it had a door in front of which the
upper part was glass. Altogether it was as pretty a
gleaming piece of work as the art of carriage-building
could achieve, and a gilt rail very fitly protected it. Even
150


Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room
Hanaud was taken by its daintiness. He stood with his
hands upon the rail examining it with a smile of pleasure,
until Jim began to think that he had quite forgotten the
business which had brought him there. However, he
brought himself out of his dream with a start.
"A pretty world for rich people, Monsieur Frobisher,"
he said. "What pictures of fine ladies in billowy skirts
and fine gentlemen in silk stockings! And what splash-
ings of mud for the unhappy devils who had to walk!"
He turned his back to the chair and looked across the
room. "That is the clock which marked half-past ten,
Mademoiselle, during the moment when you had the light
turned up?" he asked of Ann.
"Yes," she answered quickly. Then she looked at it
again. "Yes, that's it."
Jim detected or fancied that he detected a tiny change
in her intonation, as she repeated her assurance, not an
inflexion of doubt—it was not marked enough for that—
but of perplexity. It was clearly, however, fancy upon
his part, for Hanaud noticed nothing at all. Jim pulled
himself up with an unspoken remonstrance. "Take
care!" he warned himself. "For once you begin to sus-
pect people, they can say and do nothing which will not
provide you with material for suspicion."
Hanaud was without doubt satisfied. The clock was
a beautiful small gilt clock of the Louis Quinze period,
shaped with a waist like a violin; it had a white face, and
it stood upon a marquetry Boulle cabinet, a little more
than waist high, in front of a tall Venetian mirror.
Hanaud stood directly in front of it and compared it with
his watch.
"It is exact to the minute, Mademoiselle," he said to
Betty, with a smile as he replaced his watch in his pocket.
He turned about, so that he stood with his back to the
dock. He faced the fire-place across the narrow neck of
the room. It had an Adam mantelpiece, fashioned from
the same fawn-coloured wood as the panels, with slender
pillars and some beautiful carving upon the board beneath
151


Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room
fully aside. All now could see what had disturbed him—
a heap of white ashes in the grate.
Hanaud went down upon his knees and picking up the
shovel from the fender he thrust it between the bars and
drew it out again with a little layer of the ashes upon it.
They were white and had been pulverised into atoms.
There was not one flake which would cover a finger-nail.
Hanaud touched them gingerly, as though he had ex-
pected to find them hot.
"This room was sealed up on Sunday morning and
to-day is Thursday afternoon," said Jim Frobisher with
heavy sarcasm. "Ashes do not as a rule keep hot more
than three days, Monsieur Hanaud."
Maurice Thevenet looked at Frobisher with indigna-
tion. He was daring to make fun of Hanaud! He
treated the Surete with no more respect than one might
treat—well, say Scotland Yard.
Even Monsieur Bex had an air of disapproval. For a
partner of the firm of Frobisher & Haslitt this gentleman
was certainly not very correct. Hanaud on the contrary
was milk and water.
"I have observed it," he replied mildly, and he sat back
upon his heels with the shovel still poised in his hands.
"Mademoiselle!" he called; and Betty moved forward
and leaned against the mantelshelf at his side. "Who
burnt these papers so very carefully?" he asked.
"I did," Betty replied.
"And when?"
"On Saturday night, a few, and the rest on Sunday
morning, before Monsieur le Commissaire arrived."
"And what were they, Mademoiselle?"
"Letters, Monsieur."
Hanaud looked up into her face quickly.
"Oho!" he said softly. "Letters! Yes! And what
kind of letters, if you please?"
Jim Frobisher was for throwing up his hands in
despair. What in the world had happened to Hanaud?
One moment he forgot altogether the business upon
153


The House of the Arrow
which he was engaged in his enjoyment of Simon
Harlowe's collection. The next he was off on his wild-
goose chase after anonymous letters. Jim had not a
doubt that he was thinking of them now. One had only
to say "letters," and he was side-tracked at once, appar-
ently ready to accuse any one of their authorship.
"They were quite private letters," Betty replied, whilst
the colour slowly stained her cheeks. "They will not
help you."
"So I see," Hanaud returned, with just a touch of a
snarl in his voice as he shook the shovel and flung the
ashes back into the grate. "But I am asking you,
Mademoiselle, what kind of letters these were."
Betty did not answer. She looked sullenly down at
the floor, and then from the floor to the windows; and
Jim saw with a stab of pain that her eyes were glistening
with tears.
"I think, Monsieur Hanaud, that we have come to a
point when Mademoiselle and I should consult together,"
he interposed.
"Mademoiselle would certainly be within her rights,"
said Monsieur Bex.
But Mademoiselle waived her rights with a little
petulant movement of her shoulders.
"Very well."
She showed her face now to them all, with the tears
abrim in her big eyes, and gave Jim a little nod of thanks
and recognition.
"You shall be answered, Monsieur Hanaud," she said
with a catch in her voice. "It seems that nothing, how-
ever sacred, but must be dragged out into the light. But
I say again those letters will not help you."
She looked across the group to her notary.
"Monsieur Bex," she said, and he moved forward to
the other side of Hanaud.
"In Madame's bedroom between her bed and the door
of the bathroom there stood a small chest in which she
kept a good many unimportant papers, such as old re-
154


Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room
ceipted bills, which it was not yet wise to destroy. This
chest I took to my office after Madame's death, of course
with Mademoiselle's consent, meaning to go through the
papers at my leisure and recommend that all which were
not important should be destroyed. My time, however,
was occupied, as I have already explained to you, and it
was not until the Friday of the sixth of May that I opened
the chest at all. On the very top I saw, to my surprise, a
bundle of letters in which the writing had already faded,
tied together with a ribbon. One glance was enough to
assure me that they were very private and sacred things
with which Mademoiselle's notary had nothing whatever
to do. Accordingly, on the Saturday morning, I brought
them back myself to Mademoiselle Betty."
With a bow Monsieur Bex retired and Betty continued
the story.
"I put the letters aside so that I might read them
quietly after dinner. As it happened I could not in any
case have given them attention before. For on that
morning Monsieur Boris formulated his charge against
me, and in the afternoon I was summoned to the Office
of the Examining Magistrate, As you can understand,
I was—I don't say frightened—but distressed by this
accusation; and it was not until quite late in the evening,
and then rather to distract my thoughts than for any
other reason, that I looked at the letters. But as soon as
I did look at them I understood that they must be de-
stroyed. There were reasons, which"—and her voice
faltered, and with an effort again grew steady—"which I
feel it rather a sacrilege to explain. They were letters
which passed between my uncle Simon and Mrs. Harlowe
during the time when she was very unhappily married to
Monsieur Raviart and living apart from him—some-
times long letters, sometimes little scraps of notes scrib-
bled off—without reserve—during a moment of freedom.
They were the letters of," and again her voice broke and
died away into a whisper, so that none could misunder-
stand her meaning—"of lovers—lovers speaking very
155


Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room
head over it. It was obviously the right-hand top corner
of a bill. For an intriguing scrap of a printed address
was visible and below a figure or two in a column.
"There must have been a bill or two mixed up with
the letters," said Betty. "I don't remember it."
She handed the fragment of paper back to Hanaud,
who sat and looked at it. Jim Frobisher standing just
behind him read the printed ends of names and words and
the figures beneath and happened to remember the very
look of them, Hanaud held them so long in his hand; the
top bit of name in large capital letters, the words below
echelonned in smaller capitals, then the figures in the
columns and all enclosed in a rough sort of triangle with
the diagonal line browned and made ragged by the fire—
thus—
ERON
STRUCTION
LLES
IS
375 -OS
"Well, it is of no importance luckily," said Hanaud
and he tossed the scrap of paper back into the grate.
"Did you notice these ashes, Monsieur Girardot, on Sun-
day morning?" He turned any slur the question might
seem to cast upon Betty's truthfulness with an ex-
planation.
"It is always good when it is possible to get a cor-
roboration, Mademoiselle."
Betty nodded, but Girardot was at a loss. He
managed to look extremely important, but importance
was not required.
"I don't remember," he said.
However, corroboration of a kind at all events did
come though from another source.
"If I might speak, Monsieur Hanaud?" said Maurice
Thevenet eagerly.
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The House of the Arrow
"But by all means," Hanaud replied.
"I came into this room just behind Monsieur
Girardot on the Sunday morning. I did not see any
ashes in the hearth, that is true. But Mademoiselle
Harlowe was in the act of arranging that screen of blue
lacquer in front of the fireplace, just as we saw it to-day.
She arranged it, and when she saw who her visitors were
she stood up with a start of surprise."
"Aha!" said Hanaud cordially. He smiled at Betty.
"This evidence is just as valuable as if he had told us
that he had seen the ashes themselves."
He rose to his feet and went close to her.
"But there is another letter which you were good
enough to promise to me," he said.
"The an "she began and Hanaud stopped her
hurriedly.
"It is better that we hold our tongues," he said with
a nod and a grin which recognised that in this matter
they were accomplices. "This is to be our exclusive little
secret, which, if he is very good, we will share with
Monsieur le Commissaire."
He laughed hugely at his joke, whilst Betty unlocked a
drawer in the Chippendale secretary. Girardot the Com-
missaire tittered, not quite sure that he thought very
highly of it. Monsieur Bex, on the other hand, by a cer-
tain extra primness of his face, made it perfectly clear
that in his opinion such a jape was very, very far from
correct.
Betty produced a folded sheet of common paper and
handed it to Hanaud, who took it aside to the window
and read it carefully. Then with a look he beckoned
Girardot to his side.
"Monsieur Frobisher can come too. For he is in the
secret," he added; and the three men stood apart at the
window looking at the sheet of paper. It was dated the
7th of May, signed "The Scourge," like the others of
this hideous brood, and it began without any preface.
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Simon Harlowe's Treasure-room
There were only a few words typed upon it, and some of
them were epithets not to be reproduced which made
Jim's blood boil that a girl like Betty should ever have
had to read them.
"Your time is coming now, you "and here fol-
lowed the string of abominable obscenities. "You\
are for it, Betty Harlowe. Hanaud the detective from
Paris is coming to look after you with his handcuffs
in his pocket. You'll look pretty in handcuffs, won't
you, Betty? It's your white neck we want! Three
cheers for Waberski? The Scourge"
Girardot stared at the brutal words and settled his
glasses on his nose and stared again.
"But—but "he stammered and he pointed to the
date. A warning gesture made by Hanaud brought him
to a sudden stop, but Frobisher had little doubt as to the
purport of that unfinished exclamation. Girardot was
astonished, as Hanaud himself had been, that this item
of news had so quickly leaked abroad.
Hanaud folded the letter and turned back into the
room.
"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said to Betty, and
Thevenet the secretary took his notebook from his
pocket.
"Shall I make you a copy of the letter, Monsieur
Hanaud?" he said, sitting down and holding out his
hand.
"I wasn't going to give it back," Hanaud answered,
"and a copy at the present stage isn't necessary. A little
later on I may ask for your assistance."
He put the letter away in his letter-case, and his letter-
case away in his breast-pocket. When he looked up again
he saw that Betty was holding out to him a key.
"This unlocks the cabinet at the end of the room,"
she said.
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The House of the Arrow
"Yes! Let us look now for the famous arrow, or we
shall have Monsieur Frobisher displeased with us again,"
said Hanaud.
The cabinet stood against the wall at the end of the
room opposite to the windows, and close to the door which
opened on to the hall. Hanaud took the key, unlocked
the door of the cabinet and started back with a "Wow."
He was really startled, for facing him upon a shelf were
two tiny human heads, perfect in feature, in hair, in eyes,
but reduced to the size of big oranges. They were the
heads of Indian tribesmen killed upon the banks of the
Amazon, and preserved and reduced by their conquerors
by the process common amongst those forests.
"If the arrow is anywhere in this room, it is here that
we should find it," he said, but though he found many
curious oddities in that cabinet, of the perfect specimen of
a poison arrow there was never a trace. He turned away
with an air of disappointment.
"Well then, Mademoiselle, there is nothing else for it,"
he said regretfully; and for an hour he searched that
room, turning back the carpet, examining the upholstery
of the chairs, and the curtains, shaking out every vase,
and finally giving his attention to Betty's secretary. He
probed every cranny of it; he discovered the simple
mechanism of its secret drawers; he turned out every
, pigeon-hole; working with extraordinary swiftness and
replacing everything in its proper place. At the end of
the hour the room was as orderly as when he had entered
it; yet he had gone through it with a tooth comb.
"No, it is not here," he said and he seated himself in
a chair and drew a breath. "But on the other hand, as
the two ladies and Monsieur Frobisher are aware, I was
prepared not to find it here."
"We have finished then?" said Betty, but Hanaud did
not stir.
"For a moment," he replied, "I shall be glad, Monsieur
Girardot, if you will remove the seals in the hall from the
door at the end of the room."
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chapter fourteen: An Experiment and
a Discovery
GASTON answered the bell.
"Will you please send Francine Rollard here,"
said Hanaud.
Gaston, however, stood his ground. He looked beyond
Hanaud to Betty.
"If Mademoiselle gives me the order," he said
respectfully.
"At once then, Gaston," Betty replied, and she sat
down in a chair.
Francine Rollard was apparently difficult to persuade.
For the minutes passed, and when at last she did come
into the treasure room she was scared and reluctant. She
was a girl hardly over twenty, very neat and trim and
pretty, and rather like some wild shy creature out of the
woods. She looked round the group which awaited her
with restless eyes and a sullen air of suspicion. But it
was the suspicion of wild people for townsfolk.
"Rollard," said Hanaud gently, "I sent for you, for
I want another woman to help me in acting a little scene."
He turned towards Ann Upcott.
"Now, Mademoiselle, will you please repeat exactly
your movements here on the night when Madame Har-
lowe died? You came into the room—so. You stood
by the electric-light switch there. You turned it on, you
noticed the time, and you turned it off quickly. For this
communicating door stood wide open—so!—and a strong
light poured out of Madame Harlowe's bedroom through
the doorway."
Hanaud was very busy, placing himself first by the side
of Ann to make sure that she stood in the exact place
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An Experiment and a Discovery
which she had described, and then running across the
room to set wide open the communicating door.
"You could just see the light gleaming on the orna-
ments and panels of the Sedan chair, on the other side of
the fireplace on your right. So! And there, Made-
moiselle, you stood in the darkness and," his words
lengthened out now with tiny intervals between each one
—"you heard the sound of the struggle in the bedroom
and caught some words spoken in a clear whisper."
"Yes," Ann replied with a shiver. The solemn manner
of authority with which he spoke obviously alarmed her.
She looked at him with troubled eyes.
"Then will you stand there once more," he continued,
"and once more listen as you listened on that night. I
thank you!" He went away to Betty. "Now, Made-
moiselle, and you, Francine Rollard, will you both please
come with me."
He walked towards the communicating door but Betty
did not even attempt to rise from her chair.
"Monsieur Hanaud," she said with her cheeks very
white and her voice shaking, "I can guess what you pro-
pose to do. But it is horrible and rather cruel to us.
And I cannot see how it will help."
Ann Upcott broke in before Hanaud could reply. She
was more troubled even than Betty, though without doubt
hers was to be the easier part.
"It cannot help at all," she said. "Why must we pre-
tend now the dreadful thing which was lived then?"
Hanaud turned about in the doorway.
"Ladies, I beg you to let me have my way. I think
that when I have finished, you will yourselves understand
that my experiment has not been without its use. I
understand of course that moments like these bring their
distress. But—you will pardon me—I am not thinking
of you"—and there was so much quietude and gravity in
the detective's voice that his words, harsh though they
were, carried with them no offence. "No, I am thinking
of a woman more than double the age of either of you,
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The House of the Arrow
whose unhappy life came to an end here on the night of
the 27th of April. I am remembering two photographs
which you, Mademoiselle Harlowe, showed me this morn-
ing—I am moved by them. Yes, that is the truth."
He closed his eyes as if he saw those two portraits with
their dreadful contrast impressed upon his eyelids. "I
am her advocate," he cried aloud in a stirring voice. "The
tragic woman, I stand for her! If she was done to death,
I mean to know and I mean to punish!"
Never had Frobisher believed that Hanaud could have
been so transfigured, could have felt or spoken with so
much passion. He stood before them an erect and
menacing figure, all his grossness melted out of him, a
man with a flaming sword.
"As for you two ladies, you are young. What does a
little distress matter to you? A few shivers of discom-
fort? How long will they last? I beg you not to hinder
me!"
Betty rose up from her chair without another word.
But she did not rise without an effort, and when she
stood up at last she swayed upon her feet and her face
was as white as chalk.
"Come, Francine!" she said, pronouncing her words
like a person with an impediment of speech. "We must
show Monsieur Hanaud that we are not the cowards he
takes us for."
But Francine still held back.
"I don't understand at all. I am only a poor girl and
this frightens me. The police! They set traps—the
police."
Hanaud laughed.
"And how often do they catch the innocent in them?
Tell me that, Mademoiselle Francine!"
He turned almost contemptuously towards Mrs. Har-
lowe's bedroom. Betty and Francine followed upon his
heels, the others trooped in behind, with Frobisher last
of all. He indeed was as reluctant to witness Hanaud's
experiment as the girls were to take a part in it. It
164


An Experiment and a Discovery
savoured of the theatrical. There was to be some sort
of imagined reproduction of the scene which Ann Upcott
had described, no doubt with the object of testing her
sincerity. It would really be a test of nerves more than a
test of honesty and to Jim was therefore neither reliable
nor fair play. He paused in the doorway to say a word
of encouragement to Ann, but she was gazing again with
that curious air of perplexity at the clock upon the
marquetry cabinet.
"There is nothing to fear, Ann," he said, and she with-
drew her eyes from the clock. They were dancing now
as she turned them upon Frobisher.
"I wondered whether I should ever hear you call me
by my name," she said with a smile. "Thank you, Jim!"
She hesitated and then the blood suddenly mounted into
her face. "I'll tell you, I was a little jealous," she added
in a low voice and with a little laugh at herself as though
she was a trifle ashamed of the confession.
Jim was luckily spared the awkwardness of an answer
by the appearance of Hanaud in the doorway.
"I hate to interrupt, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with
a smile; "but it is of a real importance that Mademoiselle
should listen without anything to distract her."
Jim followed Hanaud into the bedroom, and was
startled. The Commissary and his secretary and Mon-
sieur Bex were in a group apart near to one of the win-
dows. Betty Harlowe was stretched upon Mrs. Har-
lowe's bed; Francine Rollard stood against the wall, near
to the door, clearly frightened out of her wits and
glancing from side to side with the furtive restless eyes
of the half-tamed. But it was not this curious spectacle
which so surprised Jim Frobisher, but something strange,
something which almost shocked, in the aspect of Betty
herself. She was leaning up on an elbow with her eyes
fixed upon the doorway and the queerest, most inscrutable
fierce look in them that he had ever seen. She was quite
lost to her environment. The experiment from which
Francine shrank had no meaning for her. She was pos-
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The House of the Arrow
sessed—the old phrase leapt into Jim's thoughts—though
her face was as still as a mass, a mask of frozen passion.
It was only for a second, however, that the strange seizure
lasted. Betty's face relaxed; she dropped back upon
the bed with her eyes upon Hanaud like one waiting for
instructions.
Hanaud, by pointing a finger, directed Jim to take
his place amongst the group at the window. He placed
himself upon one side of the bed, and beckoned to Fran-
cine. Very slowly she approached the end of the bed.
Hanaud directed her in the same silent way to come oppo-
site to him on the other side of the bed. For a little while
Francine refused. She stood stubbornly shaking her
head at the very foot of the bed. She was terrified of
some trick, and when at last at a sign from Betty she took
up the position assigned to her, she minced to it gingerly
as though she feared the floor would open beneath her
feet. Hanaud made her another sign and she looked at a
scrap of paper on which Hanaud had written some words.
The paper and her orders had obviously been given to
her whilst Jim was talking to Ann Upcott. Francine
knew what she was to do, but her suspicious peasant
nature utterly rebelled against it. Hanaud beckoned to
her with his eyes riveted upon her compelling her, and
against her will she bent forwards over the bed and across
Betty Harlowe's body.
A nod from Hanaud now, and she spoke in a low, clear
whisper:
"That—will—do—now."
And hardly had she spoken those few words which
Ann Upcott said she had heard on the night of Mrs.
Harlowe's death, but Hanaud himself must repeat them
and also in a whisper.
Having whispered, he cried aloud towards the door-
way in his natural voice:
"Did you hear, Mademoiselle? Was that the whisper
which reached your ears on the night when Madame
died?"
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An Experiment and a Discovery
All those in the bedroom waited for the answer in
suspense. Francine Rollard, indeed, with her eyes fixed
upon Hanaud in a very agony of doubt. And the answer
came.
"Yes, but whoever whispered, whispered twice this
afternoon. On the night when I came down in the dark
to the treasure room, the words were only whispered
once."
"It was the same voice which whispered them twice,
Mademoiselle?"
"Yes ... I think so ... I noticed no difference
. . . Yes."
And Hanaud flung out his arms with a comic gesture
of despair, and addressed the room.
"You understand now my little experiment. A voice
that whispers! How shall one tell it from another voice
that whispers! There is no intonation, no depth, no
lightness. There is not even sex in a voice which
whispers. We have no clue, no, not the slightest to the
identity of the person who whispered, 'That will do now,'
on the night when Madame Harlowe died." He waved
his hand towards Monsieur Bex. "I will be glad if you
will open now these cupboards, and Mademoiselle Har-
lowe will tell us, to the best of her knowledge, whether
anything has been taken or anything disturbed."
Hanaud returned to the treasure room, leaving
Monsieur Bex and Betty at their work, with the Commis-
sary and his secretary to supervise them. Jim Frobisher
followed him. He was very far from believing that
Hanaud had truthfully explained the intention of his
experiment. The impossibility of identifying a voice
which whispers! Here was something with which
Hanaud must have been familiar from a hundred cases!
No, that interpretation would certainly not work. There
was quite another true reason for this melodramatic little
scene which he had staged. He was following Hanaud in
the hope of finding out that reason, when he heard him
speaking in a low voice, and he stopped inside the dress-
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The House of the Arrow
ing-room close to the communicating door where he could
hear every word and yet not be seen himself.
"Mademoiselle," Hanaud was saying to Ann Upcott,
"there is something about this clock here which troubles
you."
"Yes—of course it's nonsense. ... I must be wrong.
. . . For here is the cabinet and on it stands the clock."
Jim could gather from the two voices that they were
both standing together close to the marquetry cabinet.
"Yes, yes," Hanaud urged. "Still you are troubled."
There was a moment's silence. Jim could imagine the
girl looking from the clock to the door by which she had
stood, and back again from the door to the clock. Surely
that scene in the bedroom had been staged to extort some
admission from Ann Upcott of the falsity of her story.
Was he now, since the experiment had failed, resorting
to another trick, setting a fresh trap?
"Well?" he asked insistently. "Why are you
troubled?"
"It seems to me," Ann replied in a voice of doubt,
"that the clock is lower now than it was. Of course it
can't be . . . and I had only one swift glimpse of it.
. . . Yet my recollection is so vivid—the room stand-
ing out revealed in the moment of bright light, and then
vanishing into darkness again. . . . Yes, the clock
seemed to me to be placed higher ..." and suddenly
she stopped as if a warning hand had been laid upon her
arm. Would she resume? Jim was still wondering when
silently, like a swift animal, Hanaud was in the doorway
and confronting him.
"Yes, Monsieur Frobisher," he said with an odd note
of relief in his voice, "we shall have to enlist you in the
Surete very soon. That I can see. Come in!"
He took Jim by the arm and led him into the room.
"As for that matter of the clock, Mademoiselle, the
light goes up and goes out—it would have been a marvel
if you had within that flash of vision seen every detail
precisely true. No, there is nothing there!" He flung
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An Experiment and a Discovery
himself into a chair and sat for a little while silent in an
attitude of dejection.
"You said this morning to me, Monsieur, that I had
nothing to go upon, that I was guessing here, and guess-
ing there, stirring up old troubles which had better be
left quietly in their graves, and at the end discovering
nothing. Upon my word, I believe you are right! My
little experiment! Was there ever a failure more abject?"
Hanaud sat up alertly.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
Jim Frobisher had had a brain wave. The utter disap-
pointment upon Hanaud's face and in his attitude had
enlightened him. Yes, his experiment had failed. For
it was aimed at Francine Rollard. He had summoned
her without warning, he had bidden her upon the instant
to act a scene, nay, to take the chief part in it, in the
hope that it would work upon her and break her down to
a confession of guilt. He suspected Ann. Well, then,
Ann must have had an accomplice. To discover the ac-
complice—there was the object of the experiment. And
it had failed abjectedly, as Hanaud himself confessed.
Francine had shrunk from the ordeal, no doubt, but the
reason of the shrinking was manifest—fear of the police,
suspicion of a trap, the furtive helplessness of the
ignorant. She had not delivered herself into Hanaud's
toils. But not a word of this conjecture did Jim reveal
to Hanaud. To his question what was the matter, he
answered simply:
"Nothing."
Hanaud beat with the palms of his hands upon the arms
of his chair.
"Nothing, eh? nothing! That's the only answer in
this case. To every question! To every search! Noth-
ing, nothing, nothing;" and as he ended in a sinking voice,
a startled cry rang out in the bedroom.
"Betty!" Ann exclaimed.
Hanaud threw off his dejection like an overcoat. Jim
fancied that he was out of his chair and across the dress-
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The House of the Arrow
ing-room before the sound of the cry had ceased. Cer-
tainly Betty could not have moved. She was standing in
front of the dressing-table, looking down at a big jewel-
case of dark blue morocco leather, and she was lifting up
and down the open lid of it with an expression of utter
incredulity.
"Aha!" said Hanaud. "It is unlocked. We have
something, after all, Monsieur Frobisher. Here is a
jewel-case unlocked, and jewel-cases do not unlock them-
selves. It was here?"
He looked towards the cupboard in the wall, of which
the door stood open.
"Yes," said Betty. "I opened the door, and took the
case out by the side handles. The lid came open when
I touched it."
"Will you look through it, please, and see whether
anything is missing?"
While Betty began to examine the contents of the
jewel-case, Hanaud went to Francine, who stood apart.
He took her by the arm and led her to the door.
"I am sorry if I frightened you, Francine," he said.
"But, after all, we are not such alarming people, the
Police, eh? No, so long as good little maids hold their
good little tongues, we can be very good friends. Of
course, if there is chatter, little Francine, and gossip, little
Francine, and that good-looking baker's boy is to-morrow
spreading over Dijon the story of Hanaud's little experi-
ment, Hanaud will know where to look for the chat-
terers."
"Monsieur, I shall not say one word," cried Francine.
"And.how wise that will be, little Francine!" Hanaud
rejoined in a horribly smooth and silky voice. "For
Hanaud can be the wickedest of wicked Uncles to
naughty little chatterers. Ohhoho, yes! He seizes them
tight—so—and it will be ever so long before he says to
them 'That—will—do—now!'"
He rounded off his threats with a quite friendly laugh
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An Experiment and a Discovery
and gently pushed Francine Rollard from the room.
Then he returned to Betty, who had lifted the tray out
of the box and was opening some smaller cases which had
been lying at the bottom. The light danced upon pendant
and bracelet, buckle and ring, but Betty still searched.
"You miss something, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes."
"It was, after all, certain that you would," Hanaud
continued. "If murders are committed, there will be
some reason. I will even venture to guess that the jewel
which you miss is of great value."
"It is," Betty admitted. "But I expect it has only been
mislaid. No doubt we shall find it somewhere, tucked
away in a drawer." She spoke with very great eagerness,
and a note of supplication that the matter should rest
there. "In any case, what has disappeared is mine, isn't
it? And I am not going to imitate Monsieur Boris. I
make no complaint."
Hanaud shook his head.
"You are very kind, Mademoiselle. But we cannot,
alas! say here "That will do now.'" It was strange to
Jim to notice how he kept harping upon the words of
that whisper. "We are not dealing with a case of theft,
but with a case of murder. We must go on. What is it
that you miss?"
"A pearl necklace," Betty answered reluctantly.
"A big one?"
It was noticeable that as Betty's reluctance increased
Hanaud became more peremptory and abrupt.
"Not so very."
"Describe it to me, Mademoiselle!"
Betty hesitated. She stood with a troubled face look-
ing out upon the garden. Then with a shrug of resigna-
tion she obeyed.
"There were thirty-five pearls—not so very large, but
they were perfectly matched and of a beautiful pink.
My uncle took a great deal of trouble and some years to
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The House of the Arrow
collect them. Madame told me herself that they actually
cost him nearly a hundred thousand pounds. They would
be worth even more now."
"A fortune, then," cried Hanaud.
Not a person in that room had any belief that the
necklace would be found, laid aside somewhere by chance.
Here was Hanaud's case building itself up steadily.
Another storey was added to it this afternoon. This or
that experiment might fail. What did that matter? A
motive for the murder came to light now. Jim had an
intuition that nothing now could prevent a definite result;
that the truth, like a beam of light that travels for a
million of years, would in the end strike upon a dark spot,
and that some one would stand helpless and dazzled in a
glare—the criminal.
"Who knew of this necklace of yours, Mademoiselle,
beside yourself?" Hanaud asked.
"Every one in the house, Monsieur. Madame wore it
nearly always."
"She wore it, then, on the day of her death?"
"Yes, I "Betty began, and she turned towards
Ann for confirmation, and then swiftly turned away
again. "I think so."
"I am sure of it," said Ann steadily, though her
face had grown rather white and her eyes anxious.
"How long has Francine Rollard been with you?"
Hanaud asked of Betty.
"Three years. No—a little more. She is the only
maid I have ever had," Betty answered with a laugh.
"I see," Hanaud said thoughtfully; and what he saw,
it seemed to Jim Frobisher that every one else in that
room saw too. For no one looked at Ann Upcott. Old
servants do not steal valuable necklaces: Ann Upcott and
Jeanne Baudin, the nurse, were the only new-comers to
the Maison Grenelle these many years; and Jeanne Baudin
had the best of characters. Thus the argument seemed
to run though no one expressed it in words.
Hanaud turned his attention to the lock of the cup-
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An Experiment and a Discovery
board, and shook his head over it. Then he crossed to
the dressing-table and the morocco case.
"Aha!" he said with a lively interest. "This is a
different affair;" and he bent down closely over it.
The case was not locked with a key at all. There were
three small gilt knobs in the front of the case, and the
lock was set by the number of revolutions given to each
knob. These, of course, could be varied with each knob,
and all must be known before the case could be opened—
Mrs. Harlowe's jewels had been guarded by a formula.
"There has been no violence used here," said Hanaud,
standing up again.
"Of course my aunt may have forgotten to lock the
case," said Betty.
"Of course that's possible," Hanaud agreed.
"And of course this room was open to any one between
the time of my aunt's funeral and Sunday morning, when
the doors were sealed."
"A week, in fact—with Boris Waberski in the house,"
said Hanaud.
"Yes . . . yes," said Betty. "Only . . . but I
expect it is just mislaid and we shall find it. You see
Monsieur Boris expected to get some money from my
lawyers in London. No doubt he meant to make a bar-
gain with me. It doesn't look as if he had stolen it. He
wouldn't want a thousand pounds if he had."
Jim had left Boris out of his speculations. He had
recollected him with a thrill of hope that he would be
discovered to be the thief when Hanaud mentioned his
name. But the hope died away again before the reluctant
and deadly reasoning of Betty Harlowe. On the other
hand, if Boris and Ann were really accomplices in the
murder, because he wanted his legacy, the necklace might
well have been Ann's share. More and more, whichever
way one looked at it, the facts pointed damningly towards
Ann.
"Well, we will see if it has been mislaid," said Hanaud.
"But meanwhile, Mademoiselle, it would be well for you
173


The House of the Arrow
to lock that case up and to take it some time this afternoon
to your bankers."
Betty shut down the lid and spun the knobs one after
the other. Three times a swift succession of sharp little
clicks was heard in the room.
"You have not used, I hope, the combination which
Madame Harlowe used," said Hanaud.
"I never knew the combination she used," said Betty.
She lifted the jewel-case back into its cupboard; and the
search of the drawers and the cupboards began. But it
was as barren of result as had been the search of the
treasure-room for the arrow.
"We can do no more," said Hanaud.
"Yes. One thing more."
The correction came quietly from Ann Upcott. She
was standing by herself, very pale and defiant. She
knew now that she was suspected. The very care with
which every one had avoided even looking at her had left
her in no doubt.
Hanaud looked about the room.
"What more can we do?" he asked.
"You can search my rooms."
"No!" cried Betty violently. "I won't have it!"
"If you please," said Ann. "It is only fair to me.^
Monsieur Bex nodded violently.
"Mademoiselle could not be more correct," said he.
Ann addressed herself to Hanaud.
"I shall not go with you. There is nothing locked in
my room except a small leather dispatch-case. You will
find the key to that in the left-hand drawer of my dress-
ing-table. I will wait for you in the library."
Hanaud bowed, and before he could move from his
position Betty did a thing for which Jim could have
hugged her there and then before them all. She went
straight to Ann and set her arm about her waist.
"I'll wait with you, Ann," she said. "Of course it's
ridiculous," and she led Ann out of the room.
174


chapter fifteen: The Finding of the
Arrow
ANN'S rooms were upon the second floor with the
windows upon the garden, a bedroom and a sitting-
room communicating directly with one another. They
were low in the roof, but spacious, and Hanaud, as he
looked around the bedroom, said in a tone of doubt:
"Yes . . . after all, if one were frightened suddenly
out of one's wits, one might stumble about this room in
the dark and lose one's way to the light switch. There
isn't one over the bed." Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"But, to be sure, one would be careful that one's details
could be verified. So "and the doubt passed out of
his voice.
The words were all Greek to the Commissary of Police
and his secretary and Monsieur Bex. Maurice Thevenet,
indeed, looked sharply at Hanaud, as if he was on the
point of asking one of those questions which he had been
invited to ask. But Girardot, the Commissary who was
panting heavily with his ascent of two flights of stairs,
spoke first.
"We shall find nothing to interest us here," he said.
"That pretty girl would never have asked us to pry about
amongst her dainty belongings if there had been any-
thing to discover."
"One never knows," replied Hanaud. "Let us see!"
Jim walked away into the sitting-room. He had no
wish to follow step by step Hanaud and the Commissary
in their search; and he had noticed on the table in the mid-
dle of the room a blotting-pad and some notepaper and the
materials for writing. He wanted to get all this whirl of
conjecture and fact and lies, in which during the last two
days he had lived, sorted and separated and set in order
175


The Home of the Arrow
in his mind; and he knew no better way of doing so than
by putting it all down shortly in the "for" and "against"
style of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. He would
have a quiet hour or so whilst Hanaud indefatigably
searched. He took a sheet of paper, selected a pen at
random from the tray and began. It cost Ann Upcott,
however, a good many sheets of notepaper, and more than
once the nib dropped out of his pen-holder and was forced
back into it before he had finished. But he had his prob-
lem reduced at last to these terms:
For
(i) Although suspicion that
murder had been committed
arose in the first instance only
from the return to its shelf of
the "Treatise on Sporanthus
Hispidus," subsequent develop-
ments, e.g., the disappearance of
the Poison Arrow, the introduc-
tion into the case of the ill-famed
Jean Cladel, Ann Upcott's story
of her visit to the Treasure
Room, and now the mystery of
Mrs. Harlowe's pearl necklace,
make out a prima facie case for
inquiry.
fa) If murder was committed,
it is probable that it was com-
mitted at half-past ten at night
when Ann Upcott in the Treas-
ure Room heard the sound of a
struggle and the whisper, "That
will do now."
Against
But in the absence of any
trace of poison in the dead
woman's body, it is difficult to
see how the criminal can be
brought to justice, except by
(a) A confession.
(b) The commission of an-
other crime of a similar kind.
Hanaud's theory—once a poi-
soner always a poisoner.
Ann Upcott's story may be
partly or wholly false. She
knew that Mrs. Harlowe's bed-
room was to be opened and ex-
amined. If she also knew that
the pearl necklace had disap-
peared, she must have realised
that it would be advisable for
her to tell some story before its
disappearance was discovered,
which would divert suspicion
from her.
(3) It is clear that whoever
committed the murder, if murder
was committed, Betty Harlowe
had nothing to do with it. She
had an ample allowance. She
was at M. Pouillac's Ball on
It is possible that the disap-
pearance of the necklace is in
no way connected with the mur-
der, if murder there was.
176


The House of the Arrow
For
The story she told us in the
garden may have been the true
story of what occurred adapted.
It may have been she who
whispered "That will do now."
She may have whispered it to
Waberski.
Her connection with Waberski
was sufficiently close to make
him count upon Ann's support
in his charge against Betty.
(v) Waberski.
He is a scoundrel, a would-be
blackmailer.
He was in straits for money
and he expected a thumping
legacy from Mrs. Harlowe.
He may have brought Ann
Upcott into the house with the
thought of murder in his mind.
Having failed to obtain any
profit from his crime, he accuses
Betty of the same crime as a
blackmailing proposition.
As soon as he knew that Mrs.
Harlowe had been exhumed and
an autopsy made he collapsed.
He knew, if he had used himself
the poison arrow, that no trace
of poison would be found.
He knew of Jean Cladel, and
according to his own story was
in the Rue Gambetta close to
Jean Cladel's shop. It is possible
that he himself had been visiting
Cladel to pay for the solution of
Strophantus.
Against
In that case the theory of a
murder is enormously strength-
ened. But who whispered, "That
will do now"? And who was
bending over Ann Upcott when
she waked up?
But he would have collapsed
equally if he had believed that
no murder had been committed
at all.
If murder was committed the two people most
obviously suspect are Ann Upcott and Waberski work-
ing in collusion.
To this conclusion Jim Frobisher was reluctantly
brought, but even whilst writing it down theft were cer-
tain questions racing through his mind to which he could
find no answer. He was well aware that he was an utter
novice in such matters as the investigation of crimes; and
178


The Finding of the Arrow
he recognised that were the answers to these questions
known to him, some other direction might be given to
his thoughts.
Accordingly he wrote those troublesome questions
beneath his memorandum—thus:
But
(1) Why does Hanaud attach no importance to the
return of the "Treatise on Sporanthus Hispidus" to
its place in the library?
(2) What was it which so startled him upon the
top of the Terrace Tower?
(3) What was it that he had in his mind to say to
me at the Cafe in the Place D'Armes and in the end
did not say?
(4) Why did Hanaud search every corner of the
treasure room for the missing poison arrow—except
the interior of the Sedan chair?
The noise of a door gently closing aroused him from
his speculations. He looked across the room. Hanaud
had just entered it from the bedroom, shutting the com-
municating door behind him. He stood with his hand
upon the door-knob gazing at Frobisher with a curious
startled stare. He moved swiftly to the end of the table
at which Jim was sitting.
"How you help me!" he said in a low voice and smil-
ing. "How you do help me!"
Alert though Jim's ears were to a note of ridicule, he
could discover not a hint of it. Hanaud was speaking
with the utmost sincerity, his eyes very bright and his
heavy face quite changed by that uncannily sharp expres-
sion which Jim had learned to associate with some new
find in the development of the case.
"May I see what you have written?" Hanaud asked.
"It could be of no value to you," Jim replied modestly,
but Hanaud would have none of it.
"It is always of value to know what the other man
thinks, and even more what the other man sees. What
did I say to you in Paris? The last thing one sees one's
179


The House of the Arrow
self is the thing exactly under one's nose"; and he began
to laugh lightly but continuously and with a great deal of
enjoyment, which Jim did not understand. He gave in,
however, over his memorandum and pushed it along to
Hanaud, ashamed of it as something schoolboyish, but
hopeful that some of these written questions might be
answered.
Hanaud sat down at the end of the table close to Jim
and read the items and the questions very slowly with an
occasional grunt, and a still more occasional "Aha!" but
with a quite unchanging face. Jim was in two minds
whether to snatch it from his hands and tear it up or dwell
upon its recollected phrases with a good deal of pride.
One thing was clear. Hanaud took it seriously.
He sat musingf over it for a moment or two.
"Yes, here are questions, and dilemmas." He looked
at Frobisher with friendliness. "I shall make you an
allegory. I have a friend who is a matador in Spain.
He told me about the bull and how foolish those people
are who think the bull not clever. Yes, but do not jump
and look the offence with your eyes and tell me how very
vulgar I am and how execrable my taste. All that I know
very well. But listen to my friend the matador! He
says all that the bull wants, to kill without fail all the bull-
fighters in Spain, is a little experience. And very little,
he learns so quick. Look! Between the entrance of the
bull into the arena and his death there are reckoned
twenty minutes. And there should not be more, if the
matador is wise. The bull—he learns so quick the war-
fare of the ring. Well, I am an old bull who has fought
in the arena many times. This is your first corrida.
But only ten minutes of the twenty have passed. Already
you have learned much. Yes, here are some shrewd
questions which I had not expected you to ask. When the
twenty are gone, you will answer them all for yourself.
Meanwhile"—he took up another pen and made a tiny
addition to item one—"I carry this on one step farther.
See!"
180


The Finding of the Arrow
He replaced the memorandum under Jim's eyes. Jim
read:
"—subsequent developments, e.g., the disappearance of
the Poison Arrow, the introduction into the case of the
ill-famed Jean Cladel, Ann Upcott's story of her visit to
the treasure-room, and now the mystery of Mrs. Har-
lowe's pearl necklace, and the finding of the arrow, make
out a prima facie case for inquiry."
Jim sprang to his feet in excitement.
"You have found the arrow, then?" he cried, glancing
towards the door of Ann Upcott's bedroom.
"Not I, my friend," replied Hanaud with a grin.
"The Commissaire, then?"
"No, not the Commissaire."
"His secretary, then?"
Jim sat down again in his chair.
"I am sorry. He wears cheap rings. I don't like him."
Hanaud broke into a laugh of delight.
"Console yourself! I, too, don't like that young
gentleman of whom they are all so proud. Maurice
Thevenet has found nothing."
Jim looked at Hanaud in a perplexity.
"Here is a riddle," he said.
Hanaud rubbed his hands together.
"Prove to me that you have been ten minutes in the
bull-ring," he said.
"I think that I have only been five," Jim replied with
a smile. "Let me see! The arrow had not been dis-
covered when we first entered these rooms?"
"No."
"And it is discovered now?"
"Yes."
"And it was not discovered by you?"
"No."
"Nor the Commissaire?"
"No."
181


The Finding of the Arrow
"I wonder if I sucked the end of it, whilst I was think-
ing out my sentences," he stammered.
"O Lord!" cried Hanaud, and he snatched up the pen-
holder and rubbed it hard with his pocket handkerchief.
Then he spread out the handkerchief upon the table, and
fetching a small magnifying glass from his pocket, ex-
amined it minutely. He looked up with relief.
"There is not the least little trace of that reddish-
brown clay which made the poison paste. The arrow was
scraped clean before it was put on that tray of pens. I
am enchanted. I cannot now afford to lose my junior
colleague."
Frobisher drew a long breath and lit a cigarette, and
gave another proof that he was a very novice of a bull.
"What a mad thing to put the head of that arrow-
shaft, which a glance at the plates in the Treatise would
enable a child to identify, into an open tray of pens with-
out the slightest concealment!" he exclaimed.
It looked as if Ann Upcott was wilfully pushing her
neck into the wooden ring of the guillotine.
Hanaud shook his head.
"Not so mad, my friend! The old rules are the best.
Hide a thing in some out-of-the-way corner, and it will
surely be found. Put it to lie carelessly under every one's
nose and no one will see it at all. No, no! This was
cleverly done. Who could have foreseen that instead of
looking on at our search you were going to plump your-
self down in a chair and write your memorandum so
valuable on Mademoiselle Ann's notepaper? And even
then you did not notice your pen. Why should you?"
Jim, however, was not satisfied.
"It is a fortnight since Mrs. Harlowe was murdered,
if she was murdered," he cried. "What I don't under-
stand is why the arrow wasn't destroyed altogether!"
"But until this morning there was never any question
of the arrow," Hanaud returned. "It was a curiosity, an
item in a collection—why should one trouble to destroy
it? But this morning the arrow becomes a dangerous
183


The Finding of the Arrow
not have time to look for it, and, after all, we have the
important part of it."
He turned towards the mantelshelf, where some cards
of invitation were stuck in the frame of the mirror, just
as the door was opened and the Commissary with his
secretary came out from the bedroom.
"The necklace is not in that room," said Monsieur
Girardot in a voice of finality.
"Nor is it here," Hanaud replied with an unblushing
assurance. "Let us go downstairs."
Jim was utterly staggered. This room had not been
searched for the necklace at all. First the Sedan chair,
then this sitting-room was neglected. Hanaud actually
led the way out to the stairs without so much as a glance
behind him. No wonder that in Paris he had styled him-
self and his brethren the Servants of Chance.
185


chapter sixteen: Hanaud Laughs
AT the bottom of the stairs Hanaud thanked the Com-
missary of Police for his assistance.
"As for the necklace, we shall of course search the
baggage of every one in the house," he said. "But we
shall find nothing. Of that we may be sure. For if the
necklace has been stolen, too much time has passed since
it was stolen for us to hope to find it here."
He bowed Girardot with much respect out of the house,
whilst Monsieur Bex took Jim Frobisher a little aside.
"I have been thinking that Mademoiselle Ann should
have some legal help," he said. "Now both you and I
are attached to the affairs of Mademoiselle Harlowe.
And—it is a little difficult to put it delicately—it may be
that the interests of those two young ladies are not iden-
tical. It would not therefore be at all correct for me, at
all events, to offer her my services. But I can recom-
mend a very good lawyer in Dijon, a friend of mine.
You see, it may be important."
Frobisher agreed.
"It may be, indeed. Will you give me your friend's
address?" he said.
Whilst he was writing the address down Hanaud
startled him by breaking unexpectedly into a loud laugh.
The curious thing was that there was nothing whatever to
account for it. Hanaud was standing by himself between
them and the front door. In the courtyard outside there
was no one within view. Within the hall Jim and Mon-
sieur Bex were talking very seriously in a low voice.
Hanaud was laughing at the empty air and his laughter
betokened a very strong sense of relief.
"That I should have lived all these years and never
noticed that before," he cried aloud in a sort of amaze-
186


Hanaud Laughs
ment that there could be anything capable of notice which
he, Hanaud, had not noticed.
"What is it?" asked Jim.
But Hanaud did not answer at all. He dashed back
through the hall past Frobisher and his companion,
vanished into the treasure-room, closed the door behind
him and actually locked it.
Monsieur Bex jerked his chin high in the air.
"He is an eccentric, that one. He would not do for
Dijon."
Jim was for defending Hanaud.
"He must act. That is true," he replied. "Whatever
he does and however keenly he does it, he sees a row of
footlights in front of him."
"There are men like that," Monsieur Bex agreed. Like
all Frenchmen, he was easy in his mind if he could place
a man in a category.
"But he is doing something which is quite important,"
Jim continued, swelling a little with pride. He felt that
he had been quite fifteen minutes in the bull-ring. "He
is searching for something somewhere. I told him about
it. He had overlooked it altogether. I reproached him
this morning with his reluctance to take suggestions from
people only too anxious to help him. But I did him
obviously some injustice. He is quite willing."
Monsieur Bex was impressed and a little envious.
"I must think of some suggestions to make to Hanaud,"
he said. "Yes, yes! Was there not once a pearl necklace
in England which was dropped in a match-box into the
gutter when the pursuit became too hot? I have read of
it, I am sure. I must tell Hanaud that he should spend a
day or two picking up the match-boxes in the gutters. He
may be very likely to come across that necklace of
Madame Harlowe's. Yes, certainly."
Monsieur Bex was considerably elated by the bright
idea which had come to him. He felt that he was again
upon a level with his English colleague. He saw Hanaud
pouncing his way along the streets of Dijon and explain-
187


The House of the Arrow
ing to all who questioned him: "This is the idea of
Monsieur Bex, the notary. You know, Monsieur Bex,
of the Place Etienne Dolet." Until somewhere near—
but Monsieur Bex had not actually located the particular
gutter in which Hanaud should discover the match-box
with the priceless beads, when the library door opened and
Betty came out into the hall.
She looked at the two men in surprise.
"And Monsieur Hanaud?" she asked. "I didn't see
him go."
"He is in your treasure-room," said Jim.
"Oh!" Betty exclaimed in a voice which showed her
interest. "He has gone back there!"
She walked quickly to the door and tried the handle.
"Locked!" she cried with a little start of surprise. She
spoke without turning round. "He has locked himself
in! Why?"
"Because of the footlights," Monsieur Bex answered,
and Betty turned about and stared at him. "Yes, we
came to that conclusion, Monsieur Frobisher and I.
Everything he does must ring a curtain down;" and once
more the key turned in the lock.
Betty swung round again as the sound reached her ears
and came face to face with Hanaud. Hanaud looked
over her shoulder at Frobisher and shook his head
ruefully.
"You did not find it, then?" Jim asked.
"No."
Hanaud looked away from Jim to Betty Harlowe.
"Monsieur Frobisher put an idea into my head,
Mademoiselle. I had not looked into that exquisite Sedan
chair. It might well be that the necklace had been hidden
behind the cushions. But it is not there."
"And you locked the door, Monsieur," said Betty
stiffly. "The door of my room, I ask you to notice."
Hanaud drew himself erect.
"I did, Mademoiselle," he replied. ''And then?"
Betty hesitated with some sharp rejoinder on the tip
188


The House of the Arrow
"Yes."
"And so you came to the Maison Grenelle?"
"Yes."
"It is all very curious, Mademoiselle," said Hanaud
gravely, and "If it were only curious!" Jim Frobisher
wished with all his heart. For Ann Upcott quailed before
the detective's glance. It seemed to him that with another
question from him, an actual confession would falter and
stumble from her lips. A confession of complicity with
Boris Waberski! And then? Jim caught a dreadful
glimpse of the future which awaited her. The guillotine?
Probably a fate much worse. For that would be over
soon and she at rest. A few poignant weeks, an agony of
waiting, now in an intoxication of hope, now in the lowest
hell of terror; some dreadful minutes at the breaking of a
dawn—and an end! That would be better after all than
the endless years of sordid heart-breaking labour, coarse
food and clothes, amongst the criminals of a convict
prison in France.
Jim turned his eyes away from her with a shiver of
discomfort and saw with a queer little shock that Betty
was watching him with a singular intentness; as if what
interested her was not so much Ann's peril as his feeling
about it.
Meanwhile Ann had made up her mind.
"I shall tell you at once the little there is to tell," she
declared. The words were brave enough, but the bravery
ended with the words. She had provoked the short in-
terrogatory with a clear challenge. She ended it in a
hardly audible whisper. However, she managed to tell
her story, leaning there against the post of the door.
Indeed her voice strengthened as she went on and once a
smile of real amusement flickered about her lips and in
her eyes and set the dimples playing in her cheeks.
Up to eighteen months ago she had lived with her
mother, a widow, in Dorsetshire, a few miles behind
Weymouth. The pair of them lived with difficulty. For
Mrs. Upcott found herself in as desperate a position as
190


Hanaud Laughs
England provides for gentlewomen. She was a small
landowner taxed up to her ears, and then rated over the
top of her head. Ann for her part was thought in the
neighbourhood to have promise as an artist. On the
death of her mother the estate was sold as a toy to a
manufacturer, and Ann with a small purse and a sack-
load of ambitions set out for London.
"It took me a year to understand that I was and should
remain an amateur. I counted over my money. I had
three hundred pounds left. What was I going to do with
it? It wasn't enough to set me up in a shop. On the
other hand, I hated the idea of dependence. So I made
up my mind to have ten wild gorgeous days at Monte
Carlo and make a fortune, or lose the lot."
It was then that the smile set her eyes dancing.
"I should do the same again," she cried quite unrepent-
antly. "I had never been out of England in my life, but I
knew a good deal of schoolgirl's French. I bought a few
frocks and hats and off I went. I had the most glorious
time. I was nineteen. Everything from the sleeping-
cars to the croupiers enchanted me. I stayed at one of the
smaller hotels up the hill. I met one or two people whom
I knew and they introduced me into the Sporting Club.
Oh, and lots and lots of people wanted to be kind to me!"
she cried.
"That is thoroughly intelligible," said Hanaud dryly.
"Oh, but quite nice people too," Ann rejoined. Her
face was glowing with the recollections of that short
joyous time. She had forgotten, for the moment,
altogether the predicament in which she stood, or she
was acting with an artfulness which Hanaud could hardly
have seen surpassed in all his experience of criminals.
"There was a croupier, for instance, at the trente-et-
quarante table in the big room of the Sporting Club. I
always tried to sit next to him. For he saw that no one
stole my money and that when I was winning I insured
my stake and clawed a little off the heap from time to
time. I was there for five weeks and I had made four
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The House of the Arrow
hundred pounds—and then came three dreadful nights
and I lost everything except thirty pounds which I had
stowed away in the hotel safe." She nodded across the
hall towards Jim. "Monsieur Frobisher can tell you
about the last night. For he sat beside me and very
prettily tried to make me a present of a thousand francs."
Hanaud, however, was not to be diverted.
"Afterwards he shall tell me," he said, and resumed
his questions. "You had met Waberski before that
night?"
"Yes, a fortnight before. But I can't remember who
introduced me."
"And Mademoiselle Harlowe?"
"Monsieur Boris introduced me a day or two later to
Betty at tea-time in the lounge of the Hotel de Paris."
"Aha!" said Hanaud. He glanced at Jim with an
almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. It was,
indeed, becoming more and more obvious that Waberski
had brought Ann Upcott into that household deliberately,
as part of a plan carefully conceived and in due time to
be fulfilled.
"When did Waberski first suggest that you should join
Mademoiselle Harlowe?" he asked.
"That last night," Ann replied. "He had been stand-
ing opposite to me on the other side of the trente-et-
quarante table. He saw that I had been losing."
"Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his head. "He thought
that the opportune moment had come."
He extended his arms and let his hands fall against his
thighs. He was like a doctor presented with a hopeless
case. He turned half aside from Ann with his shoulders
bent and his troubled eyes fixed upon the marble squares
of the floor. Jim could not but believe that he was at
this moment debating whether he should take the girl
into custody. But Betty intervened.
"You must not be misled, Monsieur Hanaud," she said
quickly. "It is true no doubt that Monsieur Boris men-
tioned the subject to Ann for the first time that night.
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Hanaud Laughs
But I had already told both my aunt and Monsieur Boris
that I should like a friend of my own age to live with
me and I had mentioned Ann."
Hanaud looked up at her doubtfully.
"On so short an acquaintance, Mademoiselle?"
Betty, however, stuck to her guns.
"Yes. I liked her very much from the beginning. She
was alone. It was quite clear that she was of our own
world. There was every good reason why I should wish
for her. And the four months she has been with me
have proved to me that I was right."
She crossed over to Ann with a defiant little nod at
Hanaud, who responded with a cordial grin and dropped
into English.
"So I can push that into my pipe and puff it, as my
dear Ricardo would say. That is what you mean? Well,
against loyalty, the whole world is powerless." As he
made Betty a friendly bow. He could hardly have told
Betty in plainer phrase that her intervention had averted
Ann's arrest; or Ann herself that he believed her guilty.
Every one in the hall understood him in that sense.
They stood foolishly looking here and looking there and
not knowing where to look; and in the midst of their
discomfort occurred an incongruous little incident which
added a touch of the bizarre. Up the two steps to the
open door came a girl carrying a big oblong cardboard
milliner's box. Her finger was on the bell, when Hanaud
stepped forward.
"There is no need to ring," he said. "What have you
there?"
The girl stepped into the hall and looked at Ann.
"It is Mademoiselle's dress for the Ball to-morrow
night. Mademoiselle was to call for a final fitting but
did not come. But Madame Grolin thinks that it will be
all right." She laid the box upon a chest at the side of
the hall and went out again.
"I had forgotten all about it," said Ann. "It was
ordered just before Madame died and tried on once."
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The House of the Arrow
Hanaud nodded.
"For Madame Le Vay's masked ball, no doubt," he
said. "I noticed the invitation card on the chimney-piece
of Mademoiselle's sitting-room. And in what character
did Mademoiselle propose to go?"
Ann startled them all. She flung up her head, whilst
the blood rushed into her cheeks and her eyes shone.
"Not Madame de Brinvilliers, Monsieur, at all events,"
she cried.
Even Hanaud was brought up with a start.
"I did not suggest it," he replied coldly. "But let me
see!" and in a moment whilst his face was flushed with
anger his hands were busily untying the tapes of the
box.
Betty stepped forward.
"We talked over that little dress, together, Monsieur,
more than a month ago. It is meant to represent a water-
lily."
"What could be more charming?" Hanaud asked, but
his fingers did not pause in their work.
"Could suspicion betray itself more brutally?" Jim
Frobisher wondered. What could he expect to find in
that box? Did he imagine that this Madame Grolin,
the milliner, was an accomplice of Waberski's too? The
episode was ludicrous with a touch of the horrible.
Hanaud lifted off the lid and turned back the tissue-paper.
Underneath was seen a short crepe de Chine frock of a
tender vivid green with a girdle of gold and a great gold
rosette at the side. The skirt was stiffened to stand out
at the hips, and it was bordered with a row of white satin
rosettes with golden hearts. To complete the dress there
were a pair of white silk stockings with fine gold clocks
and white satin shoes with single straps across the insteps
and little tassels of brilliants where the straps buttoned,
and four gold stripes at the back round the heels. "*
Hanaud felt under the frock and around the sides,
replaced the lid, and stood up again. He never looked at
Ann Upcott. He went straight across to Betty Harlowe.
194


I
chapter seventeen: At Jean Clodel's
AT nine o'clock that night Jim Frobisher walked past
the cashier's desk and into the hall of the Grande
Taverne. High above his head the cinematograph
machine whirred and clicked and a blade of silver light
cut the darkness. At the opposite end of the hall the
square screen was flooded with radiance and the pictures
melted upon it one into the other.
For a little while Jim could see nothing but that screen.
Then the hall swam gradually within his vision. He saw
the heads of people like great bullets and a wider central
corridor where waitresses with white aprons moved. Jim
walked up the corridor and turned off to the left between
the tables. When he reached the wall he went forward
again towards the top of the hall. On his left the hall
fell back, and in the recess were two large cubicles in
which billiard tables were placed. Against the wall of the
first of these a young man was leaning with his eyes fixed
upon the screen. Jim fancied that he recognised Maurice
Thevenet, and nodded to him as he passed. A little
further on a big man with a soft felt hat was seated
alone, with a Bock in front of him—Hanaud. Jim
slipped into a seat at his side.
"You?" Hanaud exclaimed in surprise.
"Why not? You told me this is where you would be
at this hour," replied Jim, and some note of discourage-
ment in his voice attracted Hanaud's attention.
"I didn't think that those two young ladies would let
you go," he said.
"On the contrary," Jim replied with a short laugh.
"They didn't want me at all."
He began to say something more, but thought better of
it, and called to a waitress.
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At Jean CladeVs
"Don't raise your voice too much, my friend," he said.
"I think there is some one against the wall who is honour-
ing us with his attention."
Jim shook his head.
"It is only Maurice Thevenet," he said.
"Oho?" answered Hanaud in a voice of relief. "Is
that all? For a moment I was anxious. It seemed that
there was a sentinel standing guard over us." He added
in a whisper, "I, too, hope from the bottom of my heart
that I may be proved wrong. But what of that arrow
head in the pen tray? Eh? Don't forget that!" Then
he fell into a muse.
"What happened on that night in the Maison Gre-
nelle?" he said. "Why was that communicating door
thrown open? Who was to be stripped to the skin by
that violent woman? Who whispered 'That will do
now'? Is Ann Upcott speaking the truth, and was there
some terrible scene taking place before she entered so un-
expectedly the treasure room—some terrible scene which
ended in that dreadful whisper? Or is Ann Upcott lying
from beginning to end? Ah, my friend, you wrote some
questions down upon your memorandum this afternoon.
But these are the questions I want answered, and where
shall I find the answers?"
Jim had never seen Hanaud so moved. His hands
were clenched, and the veins prominent upon his forehead,
and though he whispered his voice shook.
"Jean Cladel may help," said Jim.
"Yes, yes, he may tell us something."
They sat through an episode of the film, and saw the
lights go up and out again, and then Hanaud looked
eagerly at his watch and put it back again into his pocket
with a gesture of annoyance.
"It is still too early?" Jim asked.
"Yes. Cladel has no servant and takes his meals
abroad. He has not yet returned home."
A little before ten o'clock a man strolled in, and seating
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At Jean Cladel's
Fortune, reputation, a life of colour. A word from
Monsieur Hanaud and a way would open. He would
work night and day to justify that word.
"Monsieur, all I can promise is that when the time
comes I shall remember you. But that promise I make
now with my whole heart," said Hanaud warmly, and
with a bow he moved away.
Maurice Thevenet watched him go.
"What a man!" Maurice Thevenet went on enthu-
siastically. "I would not like to try to keep any secrets
from him. No, indeed!" Jim had heard that sentiment
before on other lips and with a greater sympathy. "I did
not understand at all what he had in his mind when he
staged that little scene with Francine Rollard. But some-
thing, Monsieur. Oh, you may be sure. Something wise.
And that search through the treasure room! How quick
and complete! No doubt while we searched Mademoiselle
Upcott's bedroom, he was just as quick and complete in
going through her sitting-room. But he found nothing.
No, nothing."
He waited for Jim to corroborate him, but Jim only
said "Oho!"
But Thevenet was not to be extinguished.
"I shall tell you what struck me, Monsieur. He was
following out no suspicions; isn't that so? He was de-
tached. He was gathering up every trifle, on the chance
that each one might sometime fit in with another and at
last a whole picture be composed. An artist! There was
a letter, for instance, which Mademoiselle Harlowe
handed to him, one of those deplorable letters which have
disgraced us here—you remember that letter, Monsieur?"
"Aha!" said Frobisher, quite in the style of Hanaud.
"But I see that this film is coming to its wedding bells.
So I shall wish you a good evening."
Frobisher bowed and left Maurice Thevenet to dream
of success in Paris. He strolled between the groups of
spectators to the entrance and thence into the street. He
walked to the arch of the Porte Guillaume and turned
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The House of the Arrow
into the Rue de la Liberte. The provincial towns go to
bed early and the street so busy throughout the day was
like the street of a deserted city. A couple of hundred
yards on, he was startled to find Hanaud, sprung from
nowhere, walking at his side.
"So my young friend, the secretary engaged you when
I had gone?" he said.
"Maurice Thevenet," said Jim, "may be as the Com-
missary says a young man of a surprising intelligence,
but to tell you the truth, I find him a very intrusive fellow.
First of all he wanted to know if you had discovered any-
thing in Ann Upcott's sitting-room, and then what Miss
Harlowe's anonymous letter was about."
Hanaud looked at Jim with interest.
"Yes, he is anxious to learn, that young man, Girardot
is right. He will go far. And how did you answer
him?"
"I said 'Oho'! first, and then I said 'Aha'! just like a
troublesome friend of mine when I ask him a simple
question which he does not mean to answer."
Hanaud laughed heartily.
"And you did very well," he said. "Come, let us turn
into this little street upon the right. It will take us to
our destination."
"Wait!" whispered Jim eagerly. "Don't cross the road
for a moment. Listen!"
Hanaud obeyed at once; and both men stood and
listened in the empty street.
"Not a sound," said Hanaud.
"No! That is what troubles me!" Jim whispered im-
portantly. "A minute ago there were footsteps behind
us. Now that we have stopped they have stopped too.
Let us go on quite straight for a moment or two."
"But certainly my friend," said Hanaud.
"And let us not talk either," Jim urged.
"Not a single word," said Hanaud.
They moved forward again anrl.behind them once more
footsteps rang upon the pavement.
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The House of the Arrow
"The police," Hanaud answered, and at the window
above there was silence.
"No one is going to do you any harm," Hanaud con-
tinued, raising his voice impatiently. "We want some in-
formation from you. That's all."
"Very well." The whisper came from the same spot.
The man standing within the darkness of the room had
not moved. "Wait! I will slip on some things and come
down."
The window and the shutter were closed again. Then
through the chinks a few beams of light strayed out.
Hanaud uttered a little grunt of satisfaction.
"That animal is getting up at last. He must have some
strange clients amongst the good people of Dijon if he is
so careful to answer them in a whisper."
He turned about and took a step or two along the
pavement and another step or two back like a man upon
a quarter deck. Jim Frobisher had never known him so
restless and impatient during these two days.
"I can't help it," he said in a low voice to Jim. "I
think that in five minutes we shall touch the truth of this
affair. We shall know who brought the arrow to him
from the Maison Grenelle."
"If any one brought the arrow to him at all," Jim
Frobisher added.
But Hanaud was not in the mood to consider ifs and
possibilities.
"Oh, that!" he said with a shrug of the shoulders.
Then he tapped his forehead. "I am like Waberski. I
have it here that some one did bring the arrow to Jean
Cladel."
He started once more his quarter-deck pacing. Only
it was now a trot rather than a walk. Jim was a little
nettled by the indifference to his suggestion. He was
still convinced that Hanaud had taken the wrong starting
point in all his inquiry. He said tartly:
"Well, if some one did bring the arrow here, it will
204


At Jean Cladel's
be the same person who replaced the treatise on Sporan-
thus on its book shelf."
Hanaud came to a stop in front of Jim Frobisher.
Then he burst into a low laugh.
"I will bet you all the money in the world that that
is not true, and then Madame Harlowe's pearl necklace
on the top of it. For after all it was not I who brought
the arrow to Jean Cladel, whereas it was undoubtedly I
who put back the treatise on the shelf."
Jim took a step back. He stared at Hanaud with his
mouth open in a stupefaction.
"You?" he exclaimed.
"I," replied Hanaud, standing up on the tips of his
toes. "Alone I did it."
Then his manner of burlesque dropped from him. He
looked up at the shuttered windows with a sudden anxiety.
"That animal is taking longer than he need," he mut-
tered. "After all, it is not to a court ball of the Duke of
Burgundy that we are inviting him."
He rang the bell again with a greater urgency. It
returned its shrill reply as though it mocked him.
"I do not like this," said Hanaud.
He seized the door-handle and leaned his shoulder
against the panel and drove his weight against it. But
the door was strong and did not give. Hanaud put his
fingers to his mouth and whistled softly. From the
direction whence they had come they heard the sound
of a man running swiftly. They saw him pass within
the light of the one street lamp at the corner and out of it
again; and then he stood at their side. Jim recognised
Nicolas Moreau, the little agent who had been sent this
very morning by Hanaud to make sure that Jean Cladel
existed.
"Nicolas, I want you to wait here," said Hanaud. "If
the door is opened, whistle for us and keep it open."
"Very well, sir."
Hanaud said in a low and troubled voice to Frobisher:
205


The House of the Arrow
"There is something here which alarms me." He dived
into a narrow alley at the side of the shop.
"It was in this alley no doubt that Waberski meant us
to believe that he hid on the morning of the 7th of May,"
Jim whispered as he hurried to keep with his companion.
"No doubt."
The alley led into a lane which ran parallel with the
street of Gambetta. Hanaud wheeled into it. A wall five
feet high, broken at intervals by rickety wooden doors,
enclosed the yards at the backs of the houses. Before
the first of these breaks in the wall Hanaud stopped. He
raised himself upon the tips of his toes and peered over
the wall, first downwards into the yard, and then upwards
towards the back of the house. There was no lamp in the
lane, no light showing from any of the windows. Though
the night was clear of mist it was as dark as a cavern in
this narrow lane behind the houses. Jim Frobisher,
though his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, knew that
he could not have seen a man, even if he had moved, ten
yards away. Yet Hanaud still stood peering at the back
of the house with the tips of his fingers on the top of the
wall. Finally he touched Jim on the sleeve.
"I believe the back window on the first floor is open,"
he whispered, and his voice was more troubled than ever.
"We will go in and see."
He touched the wooden door and it swung inwards
with a whine of its hinges.
"Open," said Hanaud. "Make no noise."
Silently they crossed the yard. The ground floor of
the house was low. Jim looking upwards could see now
that the window above their heads yawned wide open.
"You are right," he breathed in Hanaud's ear, and with
a touch Hanaud asked for silence.
The room beyond the window was black as pitch. The
two men stood below and listened. Not a word came
from it. Hanaud drew Jim into the wall of the house.
At the end of the wall a door gave admission into the
house. Hanaud tried the door, turning the handle first
206


At Jean Cladel's
and then gently pressing with his shoulder upon the panel.
"It's locked, but not bolted like the door in front," he
whispered. "I can manage this."
Jim Frobisher heard the tiniest possible rattle of a
bunch of keys as Hanaud drew it from his pocket, and
then not a noise of any kind whilst Hanaud stooped above
the lock. Yet within half a minute the door slowly
opened. It opened upon a passage as black as that room
above their heads. Hanaud stepped noiselessly into the
passage. Jim Frobisher followed him with a heart beat-
ing high in excitement. What had happened in that
lighted room upstairs and in the dark room behind it?
Why didn't Jean Cladel come down and open the door
upon the street of Gambetta? Why didn't they hear
Nicolas Moreau's soft whistle or the sound of his voice?
Hanaud stepped back past Jim Frobisher and shut the
door behind them and locked it again.
"You haven't an electric torch with you, of course?"
Hanaud whispered.
"No," replied Jim.
"Nor I. And I don't want to strike a match. There's
something upstairs which frightens me."
You could hardly hear the words. They were spoken
as though the mere vibration of the air they caused would
carry a message to the rooms above.
"We'll move very carefully. Keep a hand upon my
coat," and Hanaud went forward. After he had gone a
few paces he stopped.
"There's a staircase here on my right. It turns at
once. Mind not to knock your foot on the first step," he
whispered over his shoulder; and a moment later, he
reached down and, taking hold of Jim's right arm, laid
his hand upon a balustrade. Jim lifted his foot, felt for
and found the first tread of the stairs, and mounted be-
hind Hanaud. They halted on a little landing just above
the door by which they had entered the house.
In front of them the darkness began to thin, to become
opaque rather than a black, impenetrable hood drawn over
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The House of the Arrow
their heads. Jim understood that in front of him was an
open door and that the faint glimmer came from that
open window on their left hand beyond the door.
Hanaud passed through the doorway into the room.
Jim followed and was already upon the threshold, when
Hanaud stumbled and uttered a cry. No doubt the cry
was low, but coming so abruptly upon their long silence
it startled Frobisher like the explosion of a pistol. It
seemed that it must clash through Dijon like the striking
of a clock.
But nothing followed. No one stirred, no one cried
out a question. Silence descended upon the'house again,
impenetrable, like the darkness a hood upon the senses.
Jim was tempted to call out aloud himself, anything,
however childish, so that he might hear a voice speaking
words, if only his own voice. The words came at last,
from Hanaud and from the inner end of the room, but
in an accent which Jim did not recognise.
"Don't move! . . . There is something. ... I told
you I was frightened. . . . Oh !" and his voice died away
in a sigh.
Jim could hear him moving very cautiously. Then he
almost screamed aloud. For the shutters at the window
slowly swung to and the room was once more shrouded
in black.
"Who's that?" Jim whispered violently, and Hanaud
answered:
"It's only me—Hanaud. I don't want to show a light
here yet with that window open. God knows what dread-
ful thing has happened here. Come just inside the room
and shut the door behind you."
Jim obeyed, and having moved his position, could see
a line of yellow light, straight and fine as if drawn by a
pencil, at the other end of the room on the floor. There
was a door there, a door into the front room where they
had seen the light go up from the street of Gambetta.
Jim Frobisher had hardly realised that before the door
was burst open with a crash. In the doorway, outlined
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At Jean Cladel's
against the light beyond, appeared the bulky frame of
Hanaud.
"There is nothing here," he said, standing there block-
ing up the doorway with his hands in his pockets. "The
room is quite empty."
That room, the front room—yes! But between
Hanaud's legs the light trickled out into the dark room
behind, and here, on the floor illuminated by a little lane
of light, Jim, with a shiver, saw a clenched hand and a
forearm in a crumpled shirt-sleeve.
"Turn round," he cried to Hanaud. "Look!"
Hanaud turned.
"Yes," he said quietly. "That is what I stumbled
against."
He found a switch in the wall close to the door and
snapped it down. The dark room was flooded with light,
and on the floor, in the midst of a scene of disorder, a
table pushed back here, a chair overturned there, lay the
body of a man. He wore no coat. He was in his waist-
coat and his shirt sleeves, and he was crumpled up with
a horrible suggestion of agony like a ball, his knees
towards his chin, his head forward towards his knees.
One arm clutched the body close, the other, the one which
Jim had seen, was flung out, his hand clenched in a spasm
of intolerable pain. And about the body there was such a
pool of blood as Jim Frobisher thought no body could
contain.
Jim staggered back with his hands clasped over his
eyes. He felt physically sick.
"Then he killed himself on our approach," he cried
with a groan.
"Who?" answered Hanaud steadily.
"Jean Cladel. The man who whispered to us from
behind the window."
Hanaud stunned him with a question.
"What with?"
Jim drew his hands slowly from before his face and
forced his eyes to their service. There was no gleam of a
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The Home of the Arrow
knife, or a pistol, anywhere against the dark background
of the carpet.
"You might think that he was a Japanese who had
committed hari-kari," said Hanaud. "But if he had, the
knife would be at his side. And there is no knife."
He stooped over the body and felt it, and drew his
hand back.
"It is still warm," he said, and then a gasp, "Look!"
He pointed. The man was lying on his side in this
dreadful pose of contracted sinews and unendurable pain.
And across the sleeve of his shirt there was a broad red
mark.
"That's where the knife was wiped clean," said
Hanaud.
Jim bent forward.
"By God, that's true," he cried, and a little afterwards,
in a voice of awe: "Then it's murder."
Hanaud nodded.
"Not a doubt."
Jim Frobisher stood up. He pointed a shaking finger
at the grotesque image of pain crumpled upon the floor,
death without dignity, an argument that there was some-
thing horribly wrong with the making of the human
race—since such things could be.
"Jean Cladel?" he asked.
"We must make sure," answered Hanaud. He went
down the stairs to the front door and, unbolting it, called
Moreau within the house. From the top of the stairs
Jim heard him ask:
"Do you know Jean Cladel by sight?"
"Yes," answered Moreau.
"Then follow me."
Hanaud led him up into the back room. For a moment
Moreau stopped upon the threshold with a blank look
upon his face.
"Is that the man?" Hanaud asked.
Moreau stepped forward.
"Yes."
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At Jean Cladel's
"He has been murdered," Hanaud explained. "Will
you fetch the Commissary of the district and a doctor?
We will wait here."
Moreau turned on his heel and went downstairs.
Hanaud dropped into a chair and stared moodily at the
dead body.
"Jean Cladel," he said in a voice of discouragement.
"Just when he could have been of a little use in the
world! Just when he could have helped us to the truth!
It's my fault, too. I oughtn't to have waited until to-
night. I ought to have foreseen that this might happen."
"Who can have murdered him?" Jim Frobisher ex-
claimed.
Hanaud roused himself out of his remorse.
"The man who whispered to us from behind the
window," answered Hanaud.
Jim Frobisher felt his mind reeling.
"That's impossible!" he cried.
"Why?" Hanaud asked. "It must have been he.
Think it out!" And step by step he told the story as
he read it, testing it by speaking it aloud.
"At five minutes past ten a man of mine, still a little
out of breath from his haste, comes to us in the Grande
Taverne and tells us that Jean Cladel has just reached
home. He reached home then at five minutes to ten."
"Yes," Jim agreed.
"We were detained for a few minutes by Maurice
Thevenet. Yes." He moistened his lips with the tip
of his tongue and said softly: "We shall have to consider
that very modest and promising young gentleman rather
carefully. He detained us. We heard the clock strike
half-past ten as we waited in the street."
"Yes."
"And all was over then. For the house was as silent
as what, indeed, it is—a grave. And only just over, for
the body is still warm. If this—lying here, is Jean Cladel,
some one else must have been waiting for him to come
home to-night, waiting in the lane behind, since my man
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The House of the Arrow
didn't see him. And an acquaintance, a friend—for Jean
Cladel lets him in and locks the door behind him."
Jim interrupted.
"He might have been here already, waiting for him
with his knife bared in this dark room."
Hanaud looked around the room. It was furnished
cheaply and stuffily, half office, half living-room. An
open bureau stood against the wall near the window. A
closed cabinet occupied the greater part of one side.
"I wonder," he said. "It is possible, no doubt
But if so, why did the murderer stay so long? No search
has been made—no drawers are ransacked." He tried
the door of the cabinet. "This is still locked. No, I
don't think that he was waiting. I think that he was
admitted as a friend or a client—I fancy Jean Cladel had
not a few clients who preferred to call upon him by the
back way in the dark of the night. I think that his visitor
came meaning to kill, and waited his time and killed, and
that he had hardly killed before we rang the bell at the
door." Hanaud drew in his breath sharply. "Imagine
that, my friend! He is standing here over the man he
has murdered, and unexpectedly the shrill, clear sound of
the bell goes through the house—as though God said, 'I
saw you!' Imagine it! He turned out the light and
stands holding his breath in the dark. The bell rings
again. He must answer it or worse may befall. He goes
into the front room and throws open the window, and
hears it is the police who are at the door." Hanaud nod-
ded his head in a reluctant admiration. "But that man
had an iron nerve! He doesn't lose his head. He closes
the shutter, he turns on the light, that we may think he is
getting up, he runs back into this room. He will not
waste time by stumbling down the stairs and fumbling
with the lock of the back door. No, he opens these
shutters and drops to the ground. It is done in a second.
Another second, and he is in the lane; another, and he
is safe, his dreadful mission ended. Cladel will not speak.
Cladel will not tell us the things we want to know."
212


At Jean Cladel's
Hanaud went over to the cabinet and, using his skeleton
keys, again opened its doors. On the shelves were ranged
a glass jar or two, a retort, the simplest utensils of a
laboratory and a few bottles, one of which, larger than
the rest, was half filled with a colourless liquid.
"Alcohol," said Hanaud, pointing to the label.
Jim Frobisher moved carefully round on the outskirts,
of the room, taking care not to alter the disarrangements
of the furniture. He looked the bottles over. Not one
of them held a drop of that pale lemon-coloured solution
which the Professor, in his Treatise, had described.
Hanaud shut and locked the doors of the cabinet again
and stepped carefully over to the bureau. It stood open,
and a few papers were strewn upon the flap. He sat
down at the bureau and began carefully to search it. Jim
sat down in a chair. Somehow it had leaked out that,
since this morning, Hanaud knew of Jean Cladel. Jean
Cladel therefore must be stopped from any revelations;
and he had been stopped. Frobisher could no longer
doubt that murder had been done on the night of April
the 27th, in the Maison Grenelle. Development followed
too logically upon development. The case was building
itself up—another storey had been added to the edifice
with this new crime. Yes, certainly and solidly it was
building itself up—this case against some one.
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chapter eighteen: The White Tablet
WITHIN the minute that case was to be immeasur-
ably strengthened. An exclamation broke from
Hanaud. He sprang to his feet and turned on the light
of a green-shaded reading lamp, which stood upon the
ledge of the bureau. He was holding now under the
light a small drawer, which he had removed from the
front of the bureau. Very gingerly he lifted some little
thing out of it, something that looked like a badge that
men wear in their buttonholes. He laid it down upon the
blotting paper; and in that room of death laughed
harshly.
He beckoned to Jim.
"Come and look!"
What Jim saw was a thin, small, barbed iron dart,
with an iron stem. He had no need to ask its nature, for
he had seen its likeness that morning in the Treatise of
the Edinburgh Professor. This was the actual head of
Simon Harlowe's poison-arrow.
"You have found it!" said Jim in a voice that shook.
"Yes."
Hanaud gave it a little push, and said thoughtfully:
"A negro thousands of miles away sits outside his hut
in the Kombe country and pounds up his poison seed and
mixes it with red clay, and smears it thick and slab over
the shaft of his fine new arrow, and waits for his enemy.
But his enemy does not come. So he barters it, or gives
it to his white friend the trader on the Shire river. And
the trader brings it home and gives it to Simon Harlowe
of the Maison Grenelle. And Simon Harlowe lends it to
a professor in Edinburgh, who writes about it in a printed
book and sends it back again. And in the end, after all
its travels, it comes to the tenement of Jean Cladel in a
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The House of the Arrow
is not our affair. Let us go!" He conducted Jim to the
door and turned about. "I do not wish to interfere," he
repeated, "but it is possible that the shutters and the win-
dow will bear the traces of the murderer's fingers. I
don't think it probable, for that animal had taken his pre-
cautions. But it is possible, for he left in a great hurry."
The Commissary was overwhelmed with gratitude.
"Most certainly we will give our attention to the shut-
ters and the window-sill."
"A copy of the finger-prints, if any are found?"
Hanaud suggested.
"Shall be at Monsieur Hanaud's disposal as early as
possible," the Commissary agreed.
Jim experienced a pang of regret that Monsieur Bex
was not present at the little exchange of civilities. The
Commissary and Hanaud were so careful not to tread
upon one another's toes and so politely determined that
their own should not be trodden upon. Monsieur Bex
could not but have revelled in the correctness of their
deportment.
Hanaud and Frobisher went downstairs into the street.
The neighbourhood had not been aroused. A couple of
sergents-de-ville stood in front of the door. The street of
Gambetta was still asleep and indifferent to the crime
which had taken place in one of its least respectable
houses.
"I shall go to the Prefecture," said Hanaud. "They
have given me a little office there with a sofa. I want
to put away the arrow head before I go to my hotel."
"I shall come with you," said Jim. "It will be a relief
to walk for a little in the fresh air, after that room."
The Prefecture lay the better part of a mile away
across the city. Hanaud set off at a great pace, and reach-
ing the building conducted Jim into an office with a safe
set against the wall.
"Will you sit down for a moment? And smoke,
please," he said.
He was in a mood of such deep dejection; he was so
216


The White Tablet
changed from his mercurial self; that only now did Jim
Frobisher understand the great store he had set upon his
interview with Jean Cladel. He unlocked the safe and
brought over to the table a few envelopes of different
sizes, the copy of the Treatise and his green file. He
seated himself in front of Jim and began to open his
envelopes and range their contents in a row, when the
door was opened and a gendarme saluted and advanced.
He carried a paper in his hand.
"A reply came over the telephone from Paris at nine
o'clock to-night, Monsieur Hanaud. They say that this
may be the name of the firm you want. It was estab-
lished in the Rue de Batignolles, but it ceased to exist
seven years ago."
"Yes, that would have happened," Hanaud answered
glumly, as he took the paper. He read what was written
upon it. "Yes—yes. That's it. Not a doubt."
He took an envelope from a rack upon the table and
put the paper inside it and stuck down the flap. On the
front of the envelope, Jim saw him write an illuminating
word. "Address."
Then he looked at Jim with smouldering eyes.
"There is a fatality in all this," he cried. "We become
more and more certain that murder was committed and
how it was committed. We get a glimpse of possible
reasons why. But we are never an inch nearer to evidence
—real convincing evidence—who committed it. Fatality?
I am a fool to use such words. It's keen wits and
audacity and nerve that stop us at the end of each lane and
make an idiot of me!"
He struck a match viciously and lit a cigarette. Fro-
bisher made an effort to console him.
"Yes, but it's the keen wits and the audacity and the
nerve of more than one person."
Hanaud glanced at Frobisher sharply.
"Explain, my friend."
"I have been thinking over it ever since we left the
street of Gambetta. I no longer doubt that Mrs. Har-
217


The House of the Arrow
lowe was murdered in the Maison Grenelle. It is impos-
sible to doubt it. But her murder was part of the activi-
ties of a gang. Else how comes it that Jean Cladel was
murdered too to-night?"
A smile drove for a moment the gloom from Hanaud's
face.
"Yes. You have been quite fifteen minutes in the bull-
ring," he said.
"Then you agree with me?"
"Yes!" But Hanaud's gloom had returned. "But we
can't lay our hands upon the gang. We are losing time,
and I am afraid that we have no time to lose." Hanaud
shivered like a man suddenly chilled. "Yes, I am very
troubled now. I am very—frightened."
His fear peered out of him and entered into Frobisher.
Frobisher did not understand it, he had no clue to what
it was that Hanaud feared, but sitting in that brightly-lit
office in the silent building, he was conscious of evil
presences thronging about the pair of them, presences
grotesque and malevolent such as some old craftsman of
Dijon might have carved on the pillars of a cathedraL
He, too, shivered.
"Let us see, now!" said Hanaud.
He took the end of the arrow shaft from one envelope,
and the barb from his pocket, and fitted them together.
The iron barb was loose now because the hole to receive
it at the top of the arrow shaft had been widened to take
a nib. But the spoke was just about the right length. He
laid the arrow down upon the table, and opened his green
file. A small square envelope, such as chemists use,
attracted Jim's notice. He took it up. It seemed empty,
but as he shook it out, a square tablet of some hard white
substance rolled on to the table. It was soiled with dust,
and there was a smear of green upon it; and as Jim
turned it over, he noticed a cut or crack in its surface, as
though something sharp had struck it.
"What in the world has this to do with the affair?"
he asked.
218


The White Tablet
Hanaud looked up from his file. He reached out his
hand swiftly to take the tablet away from Jim, and drew
his hand in again.
"A good deal perhaps. Perhaps nothing," he said
gravely. "But it is interesting—that tablet. I shall know
more about it to-morrow."
Jim could not for the life of him remember any occa-
sion which had brought this tablet into notice. It cer-
tainly had not been discovered in Jean Cladel's house, for
it was already there in the safe in the office. Jim had
noticed the little square envelope as Hanaud fetched it
out of the safe. The tablet looked as if it had been picked
up from the road like Monsieur Bex's famous match-box.
Or—yes, there was that smear of green—from the grass.
Jim sat up straight in his chair. They had all been to-
gether in the garden this morning. Hanaud, himself,
Betty and Ann Upcott. But at that point Frobisher's
conjectures halted. Neither his memory nor deduction
could connect that tablet with the half-hour the four of
them had passed in the shade of the sycamores. The only
thing of which he was quite sure was the great importance
which Hanaud attached to it. For all the time that he
handled and examined it Hanaud's eyes never left him,
never once. They followed each little movement of finger
tip and thumb with an extraordinary alertness, and when
Jim at last tilted it off his palm back into its little enve-
lope, the detective undoubtedly drew a breath of relief.
Jim Frobisher laughed good-humouredly. He was
getting to know his man. He did not invite any "Aha's"
and "Oho's" by vain questionings. He leaned across the
table and took up his own memorandum which Hanaud
had just laid aside out of his file. He laid it on the table
in front of him and added two new questions to those
which he had already written out. Thus:
(5) What was the exact message telephoned from
Paris to the Prefecture and hidden away in an enve-
lope marked by Hanaud: "Address"?
219


The White Tablet
/
its importance the very next morning before I even
arrived at the Maison Grenelle, when you told Made-
moiselle that you had shown it to me."
Jim cast his memory back. He had a passion for pre-
cision and exactness which was very proper in one of
his profession.
"It was not until you came that I learnt Miss Har-
lowe had the news by an anonymous letter," he said.
"Well, that doesn't matter," Hanaud interposed a
trifle quickly. "The point of importance to me is that
when the case is done with, and I have a little time to
devote to these letters, the telegram may be of value."
"Yes, I see," said Jim. "I see that," he repeated, and
he shifted uncomfortably in his chair; and opened his
mouth and closed it again; and remained suspended be-
tween speech and silence, whilst Hanaud read through his
file and contemplated his exhibits and found no hope in
them.
"They lead me nowhere!" he cried violently; and Jim
Frobisher made up his mind. ,
"Monsieur Hanaud, you do not share your thoughts
with me," he said rather formally, "but I will deal
with you in a better way; apart from this crime in the
Maison Grenelle, you have the mystery of these anony-
mous letters to solve. I can help you to this extent.
Another of them has been received."
"When?"
"To-night, whilst we sat at dinner."
"By whom?"
"Ann Upcott."
"What!"
Hanaud was out of his chair with a cry, towering up,
his face white as the walls of the room, his eyes burning
upon Frobisher. Never could news have been so unex-
pected, so startling.
"You are sure?" he asked.
"Quite. It came by the evening post—with others.
Gaston brought them into the dining-room. There was
221


The White Tablet
who was so distressed this afternoon. A way out, then!"
Hanaud was discussing his problem with himself, his eyes
upon the table. "For once the Scourge is kind? I won-
der! It baffles me!" He rose to his feet and walked once
or twice across the room. "Yes, I the old bull of a hun-
dred corridas, I, Hanaud, am baffled!"
He was not posturing now. He was frankly and
simply amazed that he could be so utterly at a loss. Then,
with a swift change of mood, he came back to the table.
"Meanwhile, Monsieur, until I can explain this strange
new incident to myself, I beg of you your help," he
pleaded very earnestly and even very humbly. Fear had
returned to his eyes and his voice. He was disturbed
beyond Jim's comprehension. "There is nothing more
important. I want you—how shall I put it so that I may
persuade you? I want you to stay as much as you can in
the Maison Grenelle—to—yes—to keep a little watch on
this pretty Ann Upcott, to"
He got no further with his proposal. Jim Frobisher
interrupted him in a very passion of anger.
"No, no, I won't," he cried. "You go much too far,
Monsieur. I won't be your spy. I am not here for that.
I am here for my client. As for Ann Upcott, she is my
countrywoman. I will not help you against her. So help
me God, I won't!"
Hanaud looked across the table at the flushed and angry
face of his "junior colleague," who now resigned his
office and, without parley, accepted his defeat.
"I don't blame you," he answered quietly. "I could,
indeed, hope for no other reply. I must be quick, that's
all. I must be very quick!"
Frobisher's anger fell away from him like a cloak one
drops. He saw Hanaud sitting over against him with a
white, desperately troubled face and eyes in which there
shone unmistakeably some gleam of terror.
"Tell me!" he cried in an exasperation. "Be frank
with me for once! Is Ann Upcott guilty? She's not
223


The House of the Arrow
alone, of course, anyway. There's a gang. We're agreed
upon that. Waberski's one of them, of course? Is Ann
Upcott another? Do you believe it?"
Hanaud slowly put his exhibits together. There was
a struggle going on within him. The strain of the night
had told upon them both, and he was tempted for once to
make a confidant, tempted intolerably. On the other
hand, Jim Frobisher read in him all the traditions of his
service; to wait upon facts, not to utter suspicions; to be
fair. It was not until he had locked everything away
again in the safe that Hanaud yielded to the temptation.
And even then he could not bring himself to be direct.
"You want to know what I believe of Ann Upcott?"
he cried reluctantly, as though the words were torn from
him. "Go to-morrow to the Church of Notre Dame and
look at the facade. There, since you are not blind, you
will see."
He would say no more; that was clear. Nay, he stood
moodily before Frobisher, already regretting that he had
said so much. Frobisher picked up his hat and stick.
"Thank you," he said. "Good night."
Hanaud let him go to the door. Then he said:
"You are free to-morrow. I shall not go to the Maison
Grenelle. Have you any plans?"
"Yes. I am to be taken for a motor-drive round the
neighbourhood."
"Yes. It is worth while," Hanaud answered listlessly.
"But remember to telephone to me before you go. I shall
be here. I will tell you if I have any news. Good night."
Jim Frobisher left him standing in the middle of the
room. Before he had closed the door Hanaud had for-
gotten his presence. For he was saying to himself over
and over again, almost with an accent of despair: "I must
be quick! I must be very quick!"
Frobisher walked briskly down to the Place Ernest
Renan and the Rue de la Liberte, dwelling upon Hanaud's
injunction to examine the facade of Notre Dame. He
224


The White Tablet
must keep that in mind and obey it in the morning. But
that night was not yet over for him.
As he reached the mouth of the little street of Charles-
Robert he heard a light, quick step a little way behind
him—a step that seemed familiar. So when he turned
into the street he sauntered and looked round. He saw
a tall man cross the entrance of the street very quickly
and disappear between the houses on the opposite side.
The man paused for a second under the light of a street
lamp at the angle of the street, and Jim could have sworn
that it was Hanaud. There were no hotels, no lodgings
in this quarter of the city. It was a quarter of private
houses. What was Hanaud seeking there?
Speculating upon this new question, he forgot the
facade of Notre Dame; and upon his arrival at the Mai son
Grenelle a little incident occurred which made the prob-
ability that he would soon remember it remote. He let
himself into the house with a latchkey which had been
given to him, and turned on the light in the hall by means
of a switch at the side of the door. He crossed the hall
to the foot of the stairs, and was about to turn off the
light, using the switch there to which Ann Upcott had
referred, when the door of the treasure-room opened.
Betty appeared in the doorway.
"You are still up?" he said in a low voice, half pleased
to find her still afoot and half regretful that she was
losing her hours of sleep.
"Yes," and slowly her face softened to a smile. "I
waited up for my lodger."
She held the door open, and he followed her back into
the room.
"Let me look at you," she said, and having looked, she
added: "Jim, something has happened to-night."
Jim nodded.
"What?" she asked.
"Let it wait till to-morrow, Betty!"
Betty smiled no longer. The light died out of her
dark, haunting eyes. Lassitude and distress veiled them.
225


A Plan Frustrated
across the valley," Betty returned. In the very centre of
the cleft the point of the soaring spire of the cathedral
stood up like a delicate lance. "But I warn you that that
way, though short, is not good."
Through the gradually thinning cloud of dust which
hung behind the car they heard the jug-jug of another
motor-cycle.
"The road by which we have come is the better one,"
she continued.
"But how far is it?" the young man asked.
Betty once more consulted her speedometer.
"Forty kilometres, and we have covered them in forty
minutes, so that you can see the going is good. We
started at eleven punctually, and it is now twenty minutes
to twelve."
"Surely we started before eleven?" Jim interposed.
"Yes, but we stopped for a minute or two to tighten
the strap of the tool-box on the edge of the town. And
we started from there at eleven."
The motor-cyclist consulted his wrist-watch.
"Yes, it's twenty minutes to twelve now," he said.
"But forty kilometres! I doubt if I have the essence. I
think I must try the nearer road."
The second motor-cycle came out of the dust like a
boat out of a sea mist and slowed down in turn at the side
of them. The rider jumped out of his saddle, pushed his
goggles up on to his forehead and joined in the conver-
sation.
"That little road, Monsieur. It is not one of the
national highways. That shows itself at a glance. But
it is not so bad. From the stone bridge one can be at
the Hotel de Ville of Dijon in twenty-five minutes."
"I thank you," said the young man. "You will par-
don me. I have been here for seven minutes, and I am
expected."
He replaced his helmet, mounted his machine, and with
a splutter and half a dozen explosions ran down into the
bed of the valley.
229


The House of the Arrow
The second cyclist readjusted his goggles.
"Will you go first, Madame?" he suggested. "Other-
wise I give you my dust."
"Thank you!" said Betty with a smile, and she slipped
in the clutch and started.
Beyond the little forest and the curve the ground rose
and the valley flattened out. Across their road a broad
highway set with kilometre stones ran north and south.
"The road to Paris," said Betty as she stopped the car
in front of a little inn with a tangled garden at the angle.
She looked along the road Pariswards. "Air!" she said,
and drew a breath of longing, whilst her eyes kindled
and her white strong teeth clicked as though she was
biting a sweet fruit.
"Soon, Betty," said Jim. "Very soon!"
Betty drove the car into a iittle yard at the side of
the river.
"We will lunch here, in the garden," she said, "all
amongst the earwigs and the roses."
An omelet, a cutlet perfectly cooked and piping hot,
with a salad and a bottle of Clos du Prince of the 1904
vintage brought the glowing city of Paris immeasurably
nearer to them. They sat in the open under the shade of
a tall hedge; they had the tangled garden to themselves;
they laughed and made merry in the golden May, and
visions of wonder trembled and opened before Jim Fro-
bisher's eyes.
Betty swept them away, however, when he had lit a
cigar and she a cigarette; and their coffee steamed from
the little cups in front of them.
"Let us be practical, Jim," she said. "I want to talk
to you."
The sparkle of gaiety had left her face.
"Yes!" he asked.
"About Ann." Her eyes swept round and rested on
Jim's face. "She ought to go."
"Run away I" cried Jim with a start.
"Yes, at once and as secretly as possible."
230


A Plan Frustrated
Jim turned the proposal over in his mind whilst Betty
waited in suspense.
"It couldn't be managed," he objected.
"It could."
"Even if it could, would she consent?"
"She does."
"Of course it's pleading guilty," he said slowly.
"Oh, it isn't, Jim. She wants time, that's all. Time
for my necklace to be traced, time for the murderer of
Jean Cladel to be discovered. You remember what I told
you about Hanaud? He must have his victim. You
wouldn't believe me, but it's true. He has got to go back
to Paris and say, 'You see, they sent from Dijon for me,
and five minutes! That's all I needed! Five little minutes
and there's your murderess, all tied up and safe!' He
tried to fix it on me first."
"No."
"He did, Jim. And now that has failed he has turned
on Ann. She'll have to go. Since he can't get me he'll
take my friend—yes, and manufacture the evidence into
the bargain."
"Betty! Hanaud wouldn't do that!" Frobisher pro-
tested.
"But, Jim, he has done it," she said.
"When?"
"When he put that Edinburgh man's book about tha
arrow poison back upon the bookshelf in the library."
Jim was utterly taken back.
"Did you know that he had done that?"
"I couldn't help knowing," she answered. "The
moment he took the book down it was clear to me. He
knew it from end to end, as if it was a primer. He could
put his finger on the plates, on the history of my uncle's
arrow, on the effect of the poison, on the solution that
could be made of it in an instant. He pretended that he
had learnt all that in the half-hour he waited for us. It
wasn't possible. He had found that book the afternoon
before somewhere and had taken it away with him secretly
231


The House of the Arrow
and sat up half the night over it. That's what he had
done."
Jim Frobisher was sunk in confusion. He had been
guessing first this person, then that, and in the end had
had to be told the truth; whereas Betty had reached it in
a flash by using her wits. He felt that he had been just
one minute and a half in the bull-ring.
Betty added in a hot scorn:
"Then when he had learnt it all up by heart he puts
it back secretly in the bookshelf and<accuses us."
"But he admits he put it back," said Jim slowly.
Betty was startled.
"When did he admit it?"
"Last night. To me," replied Jim, and Betty laughed
bitterly. She would hear no good of Hanaud.
"Yes, now that he has something better to go upon."
"Something better?"
"The disappearance of my necklace. Oh, Jim, Ann
has got to go. If she could get to England they couldn't
bring her back, could they? They haven't evidence
enough. It's only suspicion and suspicion and suspicion.
But here in France it's different, isn't it? They can hold
people on suspicion, keep them shut up by themselves and
question them again and again. Oh, yesterday afternoon
in the hall—don't you remember, Jim?—I thought
Hanaud was going to arrest her there and then."
Jim Frobisher nodded.
"I thought so, too."
He had been a little shocked by Betty's proposal, but
the more familiar he became with it, the more it appealed
to him. There was an overpowering argument in its
favour of which neither he nor Hanaud had told Betty
a word. The shaft of the arrow had been discovered in
Ann Upcott's room, and the dart in the house of Jean
Cladel. These were overpowering facts. On the whole,
it was better that Ann should go, now, whilst there was
still time—if, that is, Hanaud did undoubtedly believe her
to be guilty.
232


The House of the Arrow
a man strolled out from one of the billiard-rooms, and
standing behind Jim with his eyes upon the screen, said
in a whisper:
"Do not look at me, Monsieur! It is Moreau. I go
outside. Will you please to follow."
He strolled away. Jim gave him a couple of minutes'
grace. He had remembered Hanaud's advice and had
paid for his Bock when it had been brought to him. The
little saucer was turned upside down to show that he
owed nothing. When two minutes had elapsed he
sauntered out and, looking neither to the right nor to the
left, strolled indolently along the Rue de la Gare. When
he reached the Place Darcy Nicolas Moreau passed him
without a sign of recognition and struck off to the right
along the Rue de la Liberte. Frobisher followed him
with a sinking heart. It was folly of course to imagine
that Hanaud could be so easily eluded. No doubt that
motor-car had been stopped. No doubt Ann Upcott was
already under lock and key! Why, the last words he had
heard Hanaud speak were "I must be quick!"
Moreau turned off into the Boulevard Sevigne and,
doubling back to the station square, slipped into one of
the small hotels which cluster in that quarter. The lobby
was empty; a staircase narrow and steep led from it to the
upper stories. Moreau now ascended it with Frobisher
at his heels, and opened a door. Frobisher looked into a
small and dingy sitting-room at the back of the house.
The windows were open, but the shutters were closed. A
single pendant in the centre of the room gave it light, and
at a table under the pendant Hanaud sat poring over a
map.
The map was marked with red ink in a curious way.
A sort of hoop, very much the shape of a tennis racket
without its handle, was described upon it and from the
butt to the top of the hoop an irregular line was drawn,
separating the hoop roughly into two semi-circles.
Moreau left Jim Frobisher standing there, and in a mo
ment or two Hanaud looked up.
236


A Plan Frustrated
"Did you know, my friend," he asked very gravely,
"that Ann Upcott has gone to-night to Madame Le Vay's
fancy dress ball?"
Frobisher was taken completely by surprise.
"No, I see that you didn't," Hanaud went on. He
took up his pen and placed a red spot at the edge of the
hoop close by the butt.
Jim recovered from his surprise. Madame Le Vay's
ball was the spot from which the start was to be made.
The plan after all was not so ill-devised, if only Ann could
have got to the ball unnoticed. Masked and in fancy
dress, amongst a throng of people similarly accoutred, in
a house with a garden, no doubt thrown open upon this
hot night and lit only by lanterns discreetly dim—she had
thus her best chance of escape. But the chance was al-
ready lost. For Hanaud laid down his pen again and
said in ominous tones:
"The water-lily, eh? That pretty water-lily, my friend,
will not dance very gaily to-night."
287


chapter twenty: A Map and the
Necklace
HANAUD turned his map round and pushed it
across the table to Jim Frobisher.
"What do you make of that?" he asked, and Jim drew
up a chair and sat down to examine it.
He made first of all a large scale map of Dijon and
its environments, the town itself lying at the bottom of
the red hoop and constituting the top of the handle of the
tennis racket. As to the red circle, it seemed to repre-
sent a tour which some one had made out from Dijon,
round a good tract of outlying country and back again to
the city. But there was more to it than that. The wavy
dividing line, for instance, from the top of the circle to
the handle, that is to Dijon; and on the left-hand edge of
the hoop, as he bent over the map, and just outside Dijon,
the red mark, a little red square which Hanaud had just
made. Against this square an hour was marked.
"Eleven a.m.," he read.
He followed the red curve with his eyes and just where
this dividing line touched the rim of the hoop, another
period was inscribed. Here Frobisher read:
"Eleven forty."
Frobisher looked up at Hanaud in astonishment.
"Good God!" he exclaimed, and he bent again over
the map. The point where the dividing line branched off
was in a valley, as he could see by the contours—yes—
he had found the name now—the Val Terzon. Just be-
fore eleven o'clock Betty had stopped the car just outside
Dijon, opposite a park with a big house standing back, and
had asked him to tighten the strap of the tool box. They
had started again exactly at eleven. Betty had taken note
238


The House of the Arrow
Jim was more bewildered than ever.
"I don't understand one word of it," he cried.
Hanaud reached over and touched the point with the
tip of his pen.
"This is where the motor-cyclist started, the cyclist who
met you at the branch road at eleven-forty."
"The tourist?" asked Jim. A second ago it had seemed
to him impossible that the fog could thicken about his
wits any more. And yet it had.
"Let us say the man with the portmanteau on his
trailer," Hanaud corrected. "You see that he left his
starting point in Dijon thirty-five minutes before you
left yours. The whole manoeuvre seems to have been
admirably planned. For you met precisely at the ar-
ranged spot at eleven-forty. Neither the car nor the
cycle had to wait one moment."
"Manoeuvre! Arranged spot!" Frobisher exclaimed,
looking about him in a sort of despair. "Has every one
gone crazy? Why in the world should a man start out
with a portmanteau in a side-car from Dijon at ten
twenty-five, run thirty or forty miles into the country by
a roundabout road and then return by a bad straight
track? There's no sense in it!"
"No doubt it's perplexing," Hanaud agreed. He nod-
ded to Moreau who went out of the room by a communi-
cating door towards the front of the house. "But I can
help you," Hanaud continued. "At the point where you
started after tightening the strap of the tool-box, on the
edge of the town, a big country house stands back in a
park?"
"Yes," said Jim.
"That is the house of Madame Le Vay where this fancy
dress ball takes place to-night."
"Madame Le Vay's chateau!" Frobisher repeated.
"Where "he began a question and caught it back.
But Hanaud completed it for him.
"Yes, where Ann Upcott now is. You started from
it at precisely eleven in the morning." He looked at his
240


A Map and the Necklace
watch. "It is not yet quite eleven at night. So she is
still there."
Frobisher started back in his chair. Hanaud's words
were like the blade of silver light cutting through the
darkness of the cinema hall and breaking into a sheet of
radiance upon the screen. The meaning of the red dia-
gram upon Hanaud's map, the unsuspected motive of
Betty's expedition this morning were revealed to him.
"It was a rehearsal," he cried.
Hanaud nodded.
"A time-rehearsal."
"Yes, the sort of thing which takes place in theatres,
without the principal members of the company," thought
Frobisher. But a moment later he was dissatisfied with
that explanation.
"Wait a moment!" he said. "That won't do, I fancy."
The motor-cyclist with the side-car had brought his
arguments to a standstill. His times were marked upon
the map; they were therefore of importance. What had
he to do with Ann Upcott's escape? But he visualised
the motor-cyclist and his side-car and his connection with
the affair became evident. The big portmanteau gave
Frobisher the clue. Ann Upcott would be leaving
Madame Le Vay's house in her ball-dress, just as if she
was returning to the Maison Grenelle—and without any
luggage at all. She could not arrive in Paris in the
morning like that if she were to avoid probably suspicion
and certainly remark. The motor-cyclist was to meet her
in the Val Terzon, transfer her luggage rapidly to her
car, and then return to Dijon by the straight quick road
whilst Ann turned off at the end of the valley to Paris.
He remembered now that seven minutes had elapsed be-
tween the meeting of the cycle and the .motor-car and
their separation. Seven minutes then were allowed for
the transference of the luggage. Another argument
flashed into his thoughts. Betty had told him nothing of
this plan. It had been presented to him as a mere excur-
sion on a summer day, her first hours of liberty naturally
241


The HotLse of the Arrow
"With a scheme so carefully devised, so meticulously
rehearsed? No, my friend."
Hanaud took an automatic pistol from a cabinet against
the wall and placed it in his pocket.
"You are going to leave that necklace just like that
in a table drawer?" Jim asked. "We ought to take it
first to the Prefecture."
"This room is not unwatched," replied Hanaud. "It
will be safe."
Jim hopefully tried another line of argument.
"We shall be too late now to intercept Ann Upcott at
the branch road," he argued. "It is past eleven, as you
say—well past eleven. And thirty-five minutes on a
motor-cycle in the daytime means fifty minutes in a car
at night, especially with a bad road to travel."
"We don't intend to intercept Ann Upcott at the branch
road," Hanaud returned. He folded up the map and
put it aside upon the mantelshelf.
"I take a big risk, you know," he said softly. "But I
must take it! And—no! I can't be wrong!" But he
turned from the mantelshelf with a very anxious and
troubled face. Then, as he looked at Jim, a fresh idea
came into his mind.
"By the way," he said. "The facade of Notre Dame?"
Jim nodded.
"The bas-relief of The Last Judgment. We went to
see it. We thought your way of saying what you be-
lieved a little brutal."
Hanaud remained silent with his eyes upon the floor
for a few seconds. Then he said quietly: "I am sorry."
He tacked on a question. "You say 'we'?"
"Mademoiselle Harlowe and I," Jim explained.
"Oh, yes—to be sure. I should have thought of that,"
and once more his troubled cry broke from him. "It
must be that!—No, I can't be wrong. . . . Anyway, it's
too late to change now."
A second time Moreau rapped upon the communicating
door. Hanaud sprang to alertness.
244


A Map and the Necklace
"That's it," he said. "Take your hat and stick, Mon-
sieur Frobisher! Good! You are ready?" and the room
was at once plunged into darkness.
Hanaud opened the communicating door, and they
passed into the front room—a bedroom looking out upon
the big station square. This room was in darkness too.
But the shutters were not closed, and there were patches
of light upon the walls from the lamps in the square and
the Grande Taverne at the corner. The three men could
see one another, and to Jim in this dusk the faces of his
companions appeared of a ghastly pallor.
"Daunay took his position when I first knocked," said
Moreau. "Patinot has just joined him."
He pointed across the square to the station buildings.
Some cabs were waiting for the Paris train, and in front
of them two men dressed like artisans were talking. One
of them lit a cigarette from the stump of a cigarette held
out to him by his companion. The watchers in the room
saw the end of the cigarette glow red.
"The way is clear, Monsieur," said Moreau. "We can
go." And he turned and went out of the inn to the stair-
case. Jim started to follow him. Whither they were
going Jim had not a notion, not even a conjecture. But
he was gravely troubled. All his hopes and Betty's hopes
for the swift and complete suppression of the Waberski
affair had seemingly fallen to the ground. He was not
reassured when Hanaud's hand was laid on his arm and
detained him.
"You understand, Monsieur Frobisher," said Hanaud
with a quiet authority, his eyes shining very steadily in
the darkness, his face glimmering very white, "that now
the Law of France takes charge. There must not be a
finger raised or a word spoken to hinder officers upon
their duty. On the other hand, I make you in return the
promise you desire. No one shall be arrested on suspi-
cion. Your own eyes shall bear me out."
The two men followed Moreau down the stairs and into
the street.
245


The Secret House
came to a standstill, and then Hanaud pushed him gently
into the passage. The door was closed behind them, an
almost inaudible sound told him that now the door was
locked.
"Listen!" Hanaud whispered sharply. His trained ear
had caught a sound in the house above them. And in a
second Frobisher heard it too, a sound regular and con-
tinuous and very slight, but in that uninhabited house
filled with uttermost blackness, very daunting. Grad-
ually the explanation dawned upon Jim.
"It's a clock ticking," he said under his breath.
"Yes! A clock ticking away in the empty house!" re-
turned Hanaud. And though his answer was rather
breathed than whispered, there was a queer thrill in it
the sound of which Jim could not mistake. The hunter
had picked up his spoor. Just beyond the quarry would
come in view.
Suddenly a thread of light gleamed along the passage,
lit up a short flight of stairs and a door on the right at the
head of them, and went out again. Hanaud slipped his
electric torch back into his pocket and, passing Moreau,
took the lead. The door at the head of the stairs opened
with a startling whine of its hinges. Frobisher stopped
with his heart in his throat, though what he feared he
could not have told even himself. Again the thread of
light shone, and this time it explored. The three found
themselves in a stone-flagged hall.
Hanaud crossed it, extinguished his torch and opened
a door. A broken shutter, swinging upon a hinge, enabled
them dimly to see a gallery which stretched away into the
gloom. The faint light penetrating from the window
showed them a high double door leading to some room
at the back of the house. Hanaud stole over the boards
and laid his ear to the panel. In a little while he was
satisfied; his hand dropped to the knob and a leaf of the
door opened noiselessly. Once more the torch glowed.
Its beam played upon the high ceiling, the tall windows
shrouded in heavy curtains of red silk brocade, and re-
249


The House of the Arrow
vealed to Frobisher's amazement a room which had a
look of daily use. All was orderly and clean, the furni-
ture polished and in good repair; there were fresh flowers
in the vases, whose perfume filled the air; and it was
upon the marble chimney-piece of this room that the clock
ticked.
The room was furnished with lightness and elegance,
except for one fine and massive press, with double doors
in marquetry, which occupied a recess near to the fire-
place. Girandoles with mirrors and gilt frames, now
fitted with electric lights, were fixed upon the walls, with
a few pictures in water-colour. A chandelier glittering
with lustres hung from the ceiling, an Empire writing-
table stood near the window, a deep-cushioned divan
stretched along the wall opposite the fire-place. So much
had Frobisher noticed when the light again went out.
Hanaud closed the door upon the room again.
"We shall be hidden in the embrasure of any of these
windows," Hanaud whispered, when they were once more
in the long gallery. "No light will be shown here with
that shutter hanging loose, we may be sure. Meanwhile
let us watch and be very silent."
They took their stations in the deep shadows by the
side of the window with the broken shutter. They could
see dimly the courtyard and the great carriage doors in
the wall at the end of it, and they waited; Jim Frobisher
under such a strain of dread and expectancy that each
second seemed an hour, and he wondered at the im-
mobility of his companions. The only sound of breathing
that he heard came from his own lungs.
In a while Hanaud laid a hand upon his sleeve, and the
clasp of the hand tightened and tightened. Motionless
though he stood like a man in a seizure, Hanaud too was
in the grip of an intense excitement. For one of the
great leaves of the courtyard door was opening silently.
It opened just a little way and as silently closed again.
But some one had slipped in—so vague and swift and
noiseless a figure that Jim would have believed his imag-
250


The Secret House
ination had misled him but for a thicker blot of darkness
at the centre of the great door. There some one stood
now who had not stood there a minute before, as silent
and still as any of the watchers in the gallery, and more
still than one. For Hanaud moved suddenly away on
the tips of his toes into the deepest of the gloom and,
sinking down upon his heels, drew his watch from his
pocket. He drew his coat closely about it and for a frac-
tion of a second flashed his torchlight on the dial. It was
now five minutes past twelve.
"It is the time," he breathed as he crept back to his
place. "Listen now!"
A minute passed and another. Frobisher found him-
self shivering as a man shivers at a photographer's when
he is told by the operator to keep still. He had a notion
that he was going to fall. Then a distant noise caught his
ear, and at once his nerves grew steady. It was the throb
of a motor-cycle, and it grew louder and louder. He felt
Hanaud stiffen at his side. Hanaud had been right,
then! The conviction deepened in his mind. When all
had been darkness and confusion to him, Hanaud from
the first had seen clearly. But what had he seen? Fro-
bisher was still unable to answer that question, and whilst
he fumbled amongst conjectures a vast relief swept over
him. For the noise of the cycle had ceased altogether.
It had roared through some contiguous street and gone
upon its way into the open country. Not the faintest
pulsation of its engine was any longer audible. That late-
faring traveller had taken Dijon in his stride.
In a revulsion of relief he pictured him devouring the
road, the glow of his lamp putting the stars to shame, the
miles leaping away behind him; and suddenly the pleasant
picture was struck from before his vision and his heart
fluttered up into his throat. For the leaf of the great
coach-door was swung wider, and closed again, and the
motor-cycle with its side-car was within the courtyard.
The rider had slipped out his clutch and stopped his engine
more than a hundred yards away in the other street. His
251


The House of the Arrow
own impetus had been enough and more than enough to
swing him round the corner along the road and into the
courtyard. The man who had closed the door moved to
his side as he dismounted. Between them they lifted
something from the side-car and laid it on the ground.
The watchman held open the door again, the cyclist
wheeled out his machine, the door was closed, a key
turned in the lock. Not a word had been spoken, not an
unnecessary movement made. It had all happened within
the space of a few seconds. The man waited by the gate,
and in a little while from some other street the cyclist's
engine was heard once more to throb. His work was
done.
Jim Frobisher wondered that Hanaud should let him
go. But Hanaud had eyes for no one but the man who
was left behind and the big package upon the ground
under the blank side wall. The man moved to it, stooped,
raised it with an appearance of effort, then stood upright
holding it in his arms. It was something shapeless and
long and heavy. So much the watchers in the gallery
could see, but no more.
The man in the courtyard moved towards the door
without a sound; and Hanaud drew his companions back
from the window of the broken shutter. Quick as they
were, they were only just in time to escape from that
revealing twilight. Already the intruder with his burden
stood within the gallery. The front door was unlatched,
that was clear. It had needed but a touch to open it.
The intruder moved without a sound to the double door,
of which Hanaud had opened one leaf. He stood in front
of it, pushed it with his foot and both the leaves swung
inwards. He disappeared into the room. But the faint
misty light had fallen upon him for a second, and though
none could imagine who he was, they all three saw that
what he carried was a heavy sack.
Now, at all events, Hanaud would move, thought Fro-
bisher. But he did not. They all heard the man now,
but not his footsteps. It was just the brushing of his
252


The House of the Arrow
entered that room, some one was moving quietly about it.
From the corner of the corridor in which they had taken
refuge, the three men saw the leaves of the door swing
very slowly in upon their hinges. Some one appeared
upon the threshold, and stood motionless, listening, and
after a few seconds advanced across the gallery to the
window. It was a girl—so much they could determine
from the contour of her head and the slim neck. To the
surprise of those three a second shadow flitted to her
side. Both of them peered from the window into the
courtyard. There was nothing to tell them there whether
the midnight visitors had come and gone or not yet come
at all. One of them whispered:
"The key!"
And the other, the shorter one, crept into the hall and
returned with the key which had been dropped through
the letter slot in her hand. The taller of the two laughed,
and the sound of it, so clear, so joyous like the trill of a
bird, it was impossible for Jim Frobisher even for a sec-
ond to mistake. The second girl standing at the window
of this dark and secret house, with the key in her hand to
tell her that all that had been plotted had been done, was
Betty Harlowe. Jim Frobisher had never imagined a
sound so sinister, so alarming, as that clear, joyous
laughter lilting through the silent gallery. It startled
him, it set his whole faith in the world shuddering.
"There must be some good explanation," he argued,
but his heart was sinking amidst terrors. Of what dread-
ful event was that laughter to be the prelude?
The two figures at the window flitted back across the
gallery. It seemed that there was no further reason for
precautions.
"Shut the door, Francine," said Betty in her ordinary
voice. And when this was done, within the room the
lights went on. But time and disuse had warped the
doors. They did not quite close, and between them a
golden strip of light showed like a wand.
254


The Corona Machine
hand? Eh? Can't you answer, you pretty fool?" Then
Betty's voice changed. It remained low and quiet, but
hatred crept into it, a deep, whole-hearted hatred.
"You have been interfering with me too, haven't you,
Ann? Oh, we both understand very well!" And
Hanaud's hand tightened upon Frobisher's shoulder.
Here was the real key and explanation of Betty's hatred.
Ann Upcott knew too much, was getting to know more,
might at any moment light upon the whole truth. Yes!
Ann Upcott's disappearance would look like a panic-
stricken flight, would have the effect of a confession—
no doubt! But above all these considerations, paramount
in Betty Harlowe's mind was the resolve at once to punish
and rid herself of a rival.
"All this week, you have been thrusting yourself in my
way!" she said. "And here's your reward for it, Ann.
Yes. I had you bound hand and foot and brought here.
The water-lily!" She looked her victim over as she stood
in her delicate bright frock, her white silk stockings and
satin slippers, swaying in terror. "Fifteen minutes, Ann!
That fool of a detective was right! Fifteen minutes!
That's all the time the arrow-poison takes!"
Ann's eyes opened wide. The blood rushed into her
white face and ebbed, leaving it whiter than it was before.
"Arrow-poison!" she cried. "Betty! It was you, then!
Oh!" she would have fallen forward, but Betty Harlowe
pushed her shoulder gently and she fell back upon the
divan. That Betty had been guilty of that last infamy
—the murder of her benefactress—not until this mo-
ment had Ann Upcott for one moment suspected. It was
clear to her, too, that there was not the slightest hope
for her. She burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
Betty Harlowe sat down on the divan beside her and
watched her closely and curiously with a devilish enjoy-
ment. The sound of the girl's sobbing was music in her
ears. She would not let it flag.
"You shall lie here in the dark all night, Ann, and
alone," she said in a low voice, bending over her. "To-
259


The House of the Arrow
morrow Espinosa will put you under one of the stone flags
in the kitchen. But to-night you shall lie just as you
are. Come!"
She bent over Ann Upcott, gathering the flesh of her
arm with one hand and advancing the needle with the
other; and a piercing scream burst from Francine Rollard.
"Look!" she cried, and she pointed to the door. It
was open and Hanaud stood upon the threshold.
Betty looked up at the cry and the blood receded from
her face. She sat like an image of wax, staring at the
open doorway, and a moment afterwards with a gesture
swift as lightning she drove the needle into the flesh of
her own arm and emptied it.
Frobisher with a cry of horror started forward to
prevent her, but Hanaud roughly thrust him back.
"I warned you, Monsieur, not to interfere," he said
with a savage note in his voice, which Jim had not heard
before; and Betty Harlowe dropped the needle on to the
couch, whence it rolled to the floor.
She sprang up now to her full height, her heels to-
gether, her arms outstretched from her sides.
"Fifteen minutes, Monsieur Hanaud," she cried with
bravado. "I am safe from you."
Hanaud laughed and wagged his forefinger contemptu-
ously in her face.
"Coloured water, Mademoiselle, doesn't kill."
Betty swayed upon her feet and steadied herself.
"Bluff, Monsieur Hanaud!" she said.
"We shall see."
The confidence of his tone convinced her. She flashed
across the room to her writing-table. Swift as she was,
Hanaud met her there.
"Ah, no!" he cried. "That's quite a different thing!"
He seized her wrists. "Moreau!" he called, with a nod
towards Francine. "And you, Monsieur Frobisher, will
jou release that young lady, if you please!"
Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and
locked her safely away. Jim seized upon the big scissors
260


The Corona Machine
and cut the cords about Ann's wrists and ankles, and un-
wound them. He was aware that Hanaud had flung the
chair from the writing-table into an open space, that
Betty was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had
forced her into the chair and snatched up one of the cords
which Frobisher had dropped upon the floor. When he
had finished his work, he saw that Betty was sitting with
her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to one of the
legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his
handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled. Betty had
bitten him like a wild animal caught in a trap.
"Yes, you warned me, Mademoiselle, the first morning
I met you," Hanaud said with a savage irony, "that you
didn't wear a wrist-watch, because you hated things on
your wrists. My apologies! I had forgotten!"
He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand
into the drawer. He drew out a small cardboard box
and removed the lid.
"Five!" he said. "Yes! Five!"
He carried the box across the room to Frobisher, who
was standing against the wall with a face like death.
"Look!"
There were five white tablets in the box.
"We know where the sixth is. Or, rather, we know
where it was. For I had it analysed to-day. Cyanide
of potassium, my friend! Crunch one of them between
your teeth and—fifteen minutes? Not a bit of it! A
fraction of a second! That's all!"
Frobisher leaned forward and whispered in Hanaud's
ear. "Leave them within her reach!"
His first instinctive thought had been to hinder Betty
from destroying herself. Now he prayed that she might,
and with so desperate a longing that a deep pity softened
Hanaud's eyes.
"I must not, Monsieur," he said gently. He turned to
Moreau. "There is a cab waiting at the corner of the
Maison Grenelle," and Moreau went in search of it.
Hanaud went over to Ann Upcott, who was sitting upon
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The House of the Arrow
the divan her head bowed, her body shivering. Every
now and then she handled and eased one of her tortured
wrists.
"Mademoiselle," he said, standing in front of her, "I
owe you an explanation and an apology. I never from
the beginning—no, not for one moment—believed that
you were guilty of the murder of Madame Harlowe. I
was sure that you had never touched the necklace of pink
pearls—oh, at once I was sure, long before I found it.
I believed every word of the story you told us in the
garden. But none of this dared I shew you. For only
by pretending that I was convinced of your guilt, could I
protect you during this last week in the Maison Crenelle."
"Thank you, Monsieur," she replied with a wan effort
at a smile.
"But, for to-night, I owe you an apology," he con-
tinued. "I make it with shame. That you were to be
brought back here to the tender mercies of Mademoiselle
Betty, I hadn't a doubt. And I was here to make sure
you should be spared them. But I have never in my life
had a more difficult case to deal with, so clear a conviction
in my own mind, so little proof to put before a court. I
had to have the evidence which I was certain to find in
this room to-night. But I ask you to believe me that if
I had imagined for a moment the cruelty with which
you were to be handled, I should have sacrificed this evi-
dence. I beg you to forgive me."
Ann Upcott held out her hand.
"Monsieur Hanaud," she replied simply, "but for you
I should not be now alive. I should be lying here in the
dark and alone, as it was promised to me, waiting for
Espinosa—and his spade." Her voice broke and she
shuddered violently so that the divan shook on which she
sat.
"You must forget these miseries," he said gently.
"You have youth, as I told you once before. A little
time and"
The return of Nicolas Moreau interrupted him; and
262


The Corona Machine
with Moreau came a couple of gendarmes and Girardot
the Commissary.
"You have Francine Rollard?" Hanaud asked.
"You can hear her," Moreau returned dryly.
In the corridor a commotion arose, the scuffling of
feet and a woman's voice screaming abuse. It died
away.
"Mademoiselle here will not give you so much trouble,"
said Hanaud.
Betty was sitting huddled in her chair, her face averted
and sullen, her lips muttering inaudible words. She had
not once looked at Jim Frobisher since he had entered
the room; nor did she now.
Moreau stooped and untied her ankles and a big gen-
darme raised her up. But her knees failed beneath her;
she could not stand; her strength and her spirit had left
her. The gendarme picked her up as if she had been a
child; and as he moved to the door, Jim Frobisher planted
himself in front of him.
"Stop!" he cried, and his voice was strong and
resonant. "Monsieur Hanaud, you have said just now
that you believed every word of Mademoiselle Ann's
story."
"It is true."
"You believe then that Madame Harlowe was mur-
dered at half-past ten on the night of the 27th of April.
And at half-past ten Mademoiselle here was at Monsieur
de Pouillac's ball! You will set her free."
Hanaud did not argue the point.
"And what of to-night?" he asked. "Stand aside, if
you please!"
Jim held his grourld for a moment or two, and then
drew aside. He stood with his eyes closed, and such a
look of misery upon his face as Betty was carried out
that Hanaud attempted some clumsy word of con-
dolence:
"This has been a bitter experience for you, Monsieur
Frobisher," he began.
263


The Truth About the Clock
He crossed to the door leading into the hall, and found
it locked with the key upon the inside.
"Of course," he said, "when the passage is used to
the Hotel de Brebizart, this door would be locked."
He turned the key and drew the door towards him.
The hall gaped before them black and silent. Hanaud
stood aside.
"If you please!"
Moreau and Frobisher went out; Ann Upcott hesitated
and cast a look of appeal towards Hanaud. Her perplexi-
ties were to be set at rest. She did not doubt that. This
man had saved her from death when it seemed that noth-
ing could save her. Her trust in him was absolute. But
her perplexities were unimportant. Some stroke was to
be delivered upon Betty Harlowe from which there could
be no recovery. Ann Upcott was not a good hater of
Betty's stamp. She shrank from the thought that it was
to be her hand which would deliver that stroke.
"Courage, Mademoiselle!"
Hanaud exhorted her with a friendly smile and Ann
joined the others in the dark hall. Hanaud closed the
door upon them and returned to the clock. It was twenty-
eight minutes past one.
"I have two minutes," he said to himself. "That will
just do if I am quick."
Outside the three witnesses waited in the darkness.
One of the three shivered suddenly so that her teeth
rattled in her mouth.
"Ann," Jim Frobisher whispered and he put his hand
within her arm. Ann Upcott had come to the end of
her strength. She clung to his hand spasmodically.
"Jim!" she answered under her breath. "Oh, but you
were cruel to me!"
Hanaud's voice called to them from within the room.
"Come!"
Ann stepped forward, felt for and found the handle.
She threw open the door with a nervous violence. The
treasure-room was pitch dark like the hall. Ann stepped
271


The Truth About the Clock
turned again to the mirror; and the mystery was ex-
plained. The shorter hour-hand seen in the mirror was
on the left-hand side of the figure twelve, and just where
it would have been if the hour had been half-past ten and
the clock actually where its reflection was. The figures
on the dial were reversed and difficult at a first glance to
read.
"You see," Hanaud explained, "it is the law of nature
to save itself from effort even in the smallest things. We
live with clocks and watches. They are as customary as
our daily bread. And with the instinct to save ourselves
from effort, we take our time from the position of the
hands. We take the actual figures of the hours for
granted. Mademoiselle comes out of the dark. In the
one swift flash of light she sees the hands upon the clock's
face. Half-past ten! She herself, you will remember,
Monsieur Frobisher, was surprised that the hour was
so early. She was cold, as though she had slept long in
her arm-chair. She had the impression that she had slept
long. And Mademoiselle was right. For the time was
half-past one, and Betty Harlowe had been twenty min-
utes home from Monsieur de Pouillac's ball."
Hanaud ended with a note of triumph in his voice
which exasperated Frobisher.
"Aren't you going a little too fast?" he asked. "When
the seals were removed and we entered this room for the
first time, the clock was not upon the mantelshelf but
upon the marquetry cabinet."
Hanaud nodded.
"Mademoiselle Upcott told us her story before
luncheon. We entered this room after luncheon. Dur-
ing the luncheon hours the position of the clock was
changed." He pointed to the Sedan chair. "You know
now with what ease that could be done."
"'Could, could!'" Frobisher repeated impatiently. "It
doesn't follow that it was done."
"That is true," Hanaud replied. "So I will answer
now one of the questions in your memorandum. What
273


The House of the Arrow
was it that I saw from the top of the Terrace Tower?
I saw the smoke rising from this chimney into the air.
Oh, Monsieur, I had paid attention to this house, its
windows, and its doors, and its chimney-stacks. And
there at midday, in all the warmth of late May, the
smoke was rising from the chimney of the sealed room.
There was an entrance then of which we knew nothing!
And somebody had just made use of it. Who? Ask
yourself that! Who went straight out from the Maison
Grenelle the moment I had gone, and went alone? That
clock had to be changed. Apparently some letters also
had to be burnt."
Jim hardly heard the last sentence. The clock still
occupied his thoughts. His great argument had been
riddled; his one dream of establishing Betty's innocence
in despite of every presumption and fact which could be
brought against her had been dispelled. He dropped on
to a chair.
"You understood it all so quickly," he said with bitter-
ness.
"Oh, I was not quick!" Hanaud answered. "Ascribe
to me no gifts out of the ordinary run, Monsieur. I am
trained—that is all. I have been my twenty minutes in
the bull-ring. Listen how it came about!" He looked
at Frobisher with a comical smile. "It is a pity our eager
young friend, Maurice Thevenet, is not here to profit by
the lesson. First of all, then! I knew that Mademoiselle
Betty was here doing something of great importance. It
may be only burning those letters in the hearth. It may
be more. I must wait and see. Good! There, standing
before the mirror, Mademoiselle Ann makes her little
remark that the clock seemed higher. Do I understand
yet? No, no! But I am interested. Then I notice a
curious thing, a beautiful specimen of Benvenuto Cellini's
work set up high and flat on that mantelshelf where no
one can see it. So I take it down, and I carry it to the
window, and I admire it very much and I carry it back
to the mantelshelf; and then I notice four little marks
274


The House of the Arrow
I can tell you. The good God knows that I am hardened
enough against surprises. But for a moment the mask
had slipped from her face. I felt a trickle of ice down
my spine. For out of her beautiful great eyes murder
looked."
He stood held in a spell by the memory of that fierce
look. "Ugh," he grunted; and he shook himself like
a great dog coming up out of the water.
"But you are talking too much, Monsieur Frobisher,"
he cried in a different voice, "and you are keeping Made-
moiselle from her bed, where she should have been an
hour ago. Come!"
He drove his companions out into the hall, turned on
the lights, locked the door of the treasure-room and
pocketed the key.
"Mademoiselle, we will leave these lights burning,"
he said gently to Ann, "and Moreau will keep watch in
the house. You have nothing to fear. He will not be
far from your door. Good night."
Ann gave him her hand with a wan smile.
"I shall thank you to-morrow," she said, and she
mounted the stairs slowly, her feet dragging, her body
swaying with her fatigue.
Hanaud watched her go. Then he turned to Frobisher
with a whimsical smile.
"What a pity!" he said. "You—she! No? After
all, perhaps "and he broke off hurriedly. Frobisher
was growing red and beginning to look "proper"; and the
last thing which Hanaud wished to do was to offend him
in this particular.
"I make my apologies," he said. "I am impertinent
and a gossip. If I err, it is because I wish you very
well. You understand that? Good! Then a further
proof. To-morrow Mademoiselle will tell us what hap-
pened to her to-night, how she came to go to the house
of Madame Le Vay—everything. I wish you to be pres-
ent. You shall know everything. I shall tell you myself
step by step, how my conclusions were reached. All your
276


The Truth About the Clock
questions shall be answered. I shall give you every help,
every opportunity. I shall see to it that you are not even
called as a witness of what you have seen to-night. And
when all is over, Monsieur, you will see with me that
whatever there may be of pain and distress, the Law must
take its course."
It was a new Hanaud whom Frobisher was contem-
plating now. The tricks, the Gasconnades, the buffoon-
eries had gone. He did not even triumph. A dignity
shone out of the man like a strong light, and with it he
was gentle and considerate.
"Good night, Monsieur.!" he said, and bowed; and Jim
on an impulse thrust out his hand.
"Good night!" he returned.
Hanaud took it with a smile of recognition and went
away.
Jim Frobisher locked the front door and with a sense
of desolation turned back to the hall. He heard the big
iron gates swing to. They had been left open, of course,
he recognised, in the usual way when one of the house-
hold was going to be late. Yes, everything had been
planned with the care of a commander planning a battle.
Here in this house, the servants were all tucked up in
their beds. But for Hanaud, Betty Harlowe might at
this very moment have been stealing up these stairs noise-
lessly to her own room, her dreadful work accomplished.
The servants would have waked to-morrow to the knowl-
edge that Ann Upcott had fled rather than face a trial.
Sometime in the evening, Espinosa would have called,
would have been received in the treasure-room, would
have found the spade waiting for him in the great stone-
vaulted kitchen of the Hotel de Brebizart. Oh, yes, all
dangers had been foreseen—except Hanaud. Nay, even
he in a measure had been foreseen! For a panic-stricken
telegram had reached Frobisher and Haslitt before
Hanaud had started upon his work.
"I shall be on the stairs, Monsieur, below Mademoi-
selle's door, if you should want me," said Moreau.
277


The House of the Arrow
Jim Frobisher roused himself from his reflections.
"Thank you," he answered, and he went up the stairs
to his room. A lot of use to Betty that telegram had
been, he reflected bitterly! "Where was she to-night?"
he asked, and shut up his mind against the question.
He was to know that it was precisely that panic-stricken
telegram and nothing else which had brought Betty
Harlowe's plans crashing about her ears.
278


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Ann Upcott's
Story
EARLY the next morning Hanaud rang up the Maison
Grenelle and made his appointment for the after-
noon. Jim accordingly spent the morning with Monsieur
Bex, who was quite overwhelmed with the story which
was told to him.
"Prisoners have their rights nowadays," he said.
"They can claim the presence of their legal adviser when
they are being examined by the Judge. I will go round
at once to the Prefecture"; with his head erect and his
little chest puffed out like a bantam cock, he hurried to
do battle for his client. There was no battle to be waged,
however. Certainly Monsieur Bex's unhappy client was
for the moment au secret. She would not come before
the Judge for a couple of days. It was the turn of Fran-
cine Rollard. Every opportunity was to be given to the
defence, and Monsieur Bex would certainly be granted an
interview with Betty Harlowe, if she so wished, before
she was brought up in the Judge's office.
Monsieur Bex returned to the Place Etienne Dolet
to find Jim Frobisher restlessly pacing his office. Jim
looked up eagerly, but Monsieur Bex had no words of
comfort.
"I don't like it!" he cried. "It displeases me. I am
not happy. They are all very polite—yes. But they
examine the maid first. That's bad, I tell you," and he
tapped upon the table. "That is Hanaud. He knows
his affair. The servants. They can be made to talk, and
this Francine Rollard "He shook his head. "I shall
get the best advocate in France."
Jim left him to his work and returned to the Maison
Grenelle. It was obvious that nothing of these new and
terrible developments of the "Affaire Waberski" had yet
279


Ann Upcotfs Story
"Very well. I shall go."
"Then I should destroy that letter"; and she made as
if to tear it.
"No!" cried Ann, and she held out her hand for it
"I don't know Madame Le Vay's house very well. I
might easily lose my way without the instructions. I
must take it with me."
Betty agreed and handed the letter back.
"You want to go quite quietly," she said, and she threw
herself heart and soul into the necessary arrangements.
She would give Francine Rollard a holiday and herself
help Ann to dress in her fanciful and glistening frock.
She wrote a letter to Michel Le Vay, Madame Le Vay's
second son and one of Betty's most indefatigable cour-
tiers. Fortunately for himself, Michel Le Vay kept that
letter, and it saved him from any charge of complicity
in her plot. For Betty used to him the same argument
which had persuaded Jim Frobisher. She wrote frankly
that suspicion had centred upon Ann Upcott and that it
was necessary that she should get away secretly.
"All the plans have been made, Michel," she wrote.
"Ann will come late. She is to meet the friends who will
help her—it is best that you should know as little as pos-
sible about them—in the little library. If you will keep
the corridor clear for a little while, they can get out by
the library doors into the park and be in Paris the next
morning."
She sealed up this letter without showing it to Ann
and said, "I will send this by a messenger to-morrow
morning, with orders to deliver it into Michel's own
hands. Now how are you to go?"
Over that point the two girls had some discussion.
It would be inviting Hanaud's interference if the big
limousine were ordered out. What more likely than that
he should imagine Ann meant to run away and that
Betty was helping her? That plan certainly would
not do.
"I know," Betty cried. "Jeanne Leclerc shall call
283


The House of the Arrow
for you. You will be ready to slip out. She shall stop
her car for a second outside the gates. It will be quite
dark. You'll be away in a flash."
"Jeanne Leclerc!" Ann exclaimed, drawing back.
It had always perplexed Ann that Betty, so exquisite
and fastidious in her own looks and bearing, should have
found her friends amongst the flamboyant and the cheap.
But she would rather throne it amongst her inferiors
than take her place amongst her equals. Under her re-
served demeanour she was insatiable of recognition.
The desire to be courted, admired, looked up to as a
leader and a chief, burned within her like a raging flame.
Jeanne Leclerc was of her company of satellites—a big,
red-haired woman of excessive manners, not without
good looks of a kind, and certainly received in the society
of the town. Ann Upcott not merely disliked, but dis-
trusted her. She had a feeling that there was something
indefinably wrong in her very nature.
"She will do anything for me, Ann," said Betty.
"That's why I named her. I know that she is going to
Madame Le Vay's dance."
Ann Upcott gave in, and a second letter was written to
Jeanne Leclerc. This second letter asked Jeanne to call
at the Maison Grenelle at an early hour in the morning;
and Jeanne Leclerc came and was closeted with Betty for
an hour between nine and ten. Thus all the arrangements
were made.
It was at this point that Frobisher interrupted Hanaud's
explanations.
"No," he said. "There remain Espinosa and the young
brother to be accounted for."
"Mademoiselle has just told us that she heard a slight
noise in the treasure-room and found Betty Harlowe
seated in the Sedan chair," Hanaud replied. "Betty Har-
lowe had just returned from the Hotel de Brebizart,
whither Espinosa went that night after it had grown dark
and about the time when dinner was over in the Maison
Grenelle. . . . From the Hotel de Brebizart Espinosa
284


Ann Upcotfs Story
went to the Rue Gambetta and waited for Jean Cladel. It
was a busy night, that one, my friends. That old wolf,
the Law, was sniffing at the bottom of the door. They
could hear him. They had no time to waste!"
The next night came. Dinner was very late, Jim re-
membered. It was because Betty was helping Ann to
dress, Francine having been given her holiday. Jim and
Betty dined alone, and whilst they dined Ann Upcott
stole downstairs, a cloak of white ermine hiding her
pretty dress. She held the front door a little open, and
the moment Jeanne Leclerc's car stopped before the gates,
she flashed across the courtyard. Jeanne had the door of
her car open. It had hardly stopped before it went on
again. Jim, as the story was told, remembered vividly
Betty's preoccupation whilst dinner went on, and the im-
mensity of her relief when the hall door so gently closed
and the car moved forward out of the street of Charles-
Robert. Ann Upcott had gone for good from the Maison
Grenelle. She would not interfere with Betty Harlowe
any more.
Jeanne Leclerc and Ann Upcott reached Madame Le
Vay's house a few minutes after ten. Michel Le Vay
came forward to meet them.
"I am so glad that you came, Mademoiselle," he said
to Ann, "but you are late. Madame my mother has left
her place at the door of the ball-room, but we shall find
her later."
He took them to the cloak-room, and coming away
they were joined by Espinosa.
"You are going to dance now?" Michel Le Vay asked.
"No, not yet! Then Senor Espinosa will take you to
the buffet while I look after others of our guests."
He hurried away towards the ball-room, where a clatter
of high voices competed with the music of the band.
Espinosa conducted the two ladies to the buffet. There
was hardly anybody in the room.
"We are still too early," said Jeanne Leclerc in a low
voice. "We shall take some coffee."
285


The House of the Arrow
But Ann would not. Her eyes were on the door, her
feet danced, her hands could not keep still. Was the
letter a trick? Would she, indeed, within the next few
minutes learn the truth? At one moment her heart sank
into her shoes, at another it soared.
"Mademoiselle, you neglect your coffee," said Espinosa
urgently. "And it is good."
"No doubt," Ann replied. She turned to Jeanne
Leclerc. "You will send me home, won't you? I shall
not wait—afterwards."
"But of course," Jeanne Leclerc agreed. "All that is
arranged. The chauffeur has his orders. You will take
your coffee, dear?"
Again Ann would not.
"I want nothing," she declared. "It is time that I
went." She caught a swift and curious interchange of
glances between Jeanne Leclerc and Espinosa, but she
was in no mood to seek an interpretation. There could
be no doubt that the coffee set before her had had some
drug slipped into it by Espinosa when he fetched it from
the buffet to the little table at which they sat; a drug
which would have half stupefied her and made her easy
to manage. But she was not to be persuaded, and she rose
to her feet.
"I shall get my cloak," she said, and she fetched it,
leaving her two companions together. She did not return
to the buffet
On the far side of the big central hall a long corridor
stretched out. At the mouth of the corridor, guarding
it, stood Michel Le Vay. He made a sign to her, and
when she joined him:
"Turn down to the right into the wing," he said in a
low voice. "The small library is in front of you."
Ann slipped past him. She turned into a wing of the
house which was quite deserted and silent. At the end
of it a shut door confronted her. She opened it softly.
It was all dark within. But enough light entered from
the corridor to show her the high bookcases ranged
286


The House of the Arrow
matched with a wildcat. Francine's hands were made of
steel. She snatched Ann's arms behind her back and
bound her wrists, as she lay face downwards, her bosom
labouring, her heart racing so that she felt that it must
burst. Then, as Ann gave up the contest, she turned and
tied her by the ankles.
Francine was upon her feet again in a flash. She ran
to the door, opened it a little way and beckoned. Then
she dragged her prisoner up on to a couch, and Jeanne
Leclerc and Espinosa slipped into the room.
"It's done?" said Espinosa.
Francine laughed.
"Ah, but she fought, the pretty baby! You should
have given her the coffee. Then she would have walked
with us. Now she must be carried. She's wicked, I can
tell you."
Jeanne Leclerc twisted a lace scarf about the girl's face
to hide the gag over her mouth, and, while Francine held
her up, set her white cloak about her shoulders and
fastened it in front. Espinosa then turned out the light
and drew back the curtains.
The room was at the back of the house. In the front
of the window the park stretched away. But it was the
park of a French chateau, where the cattle feed up to the
windows, and only a strip about the front terrace is de-
voted to pleasure-gardens and fine lawns. Espinosa
looked out upon meadow-land thickly studded with trees,
and cows dimly moving in the dusk of the summer night
like ghosts. He opened the window, and the throb of
the music from the ball-room came faintly to their ears.
"We must be quick," said Espinosa.
'He lifted the helpless girl in his arms and passed out
into the park. They left the window open behind them,
and between them they carried their prisoner across the
grass, keeping where it was possible in the gloom of the
trees, and aiming for a point in the drive where a motor-
car waited half-way between the house and the gates. A
blur of light from the terrace and ornamental grounds in
288


Ann Upcotfs Story
front of it became visible away upon their left, but here
all was dark. Once or twice they stopped and set Ann
upon her feet, and held her so, while they rested.
"A few more yards," Espinosa whispered and, stifling
an oath, he stopped again. They were on the edge of the
drive now, and just ahead of him he saw the glimmer of a
white dress and close to it the glow of a cigarette.
Swiftly he put Ann down again and propped her against
a tree. Jeanne Leclerc stood in front of her and, as the
truants from the ball-room approached, she began to talk
to Ann, nodding her head like one engrossed in a lively
story. Espinosa's heart stood still as he heard the man
say:
"Why, there are some others here! That is curious.
Shall we see?"
But even as he moved across the drive, the girl in the
white dress caught him by the arm.
"That would not be very tactful," she said with a
laugh. "Let us do as we would be done by," and the
couple sauntered past.
Espinosa waited until they had disappeared. "Quick!
Let us go!" he whispered in a shaking voice.
A few yards farther on they found Espinosa's closed
car hidden in a little alley which led from the main drive.
They placed Ann in the car. Jeanne Leclerc got in beside
her, and Espinosa took the wheel. As they took the road
to the Val Terzon a distant clock struck eleven. Within
the car Jeanne Leclerc removed the gag from Ann Up-
cott's mouth, drew the sack over her and fastened it
underneath her feet. At the branch road young Espinosa
was waiting with his motor-cycle and side-car.
"I can add a few words to that story, Mademoiselle,"
said Hanaud when she had ended. "First, Michel Le Vay
went later into the library, and bolted the window again,
believing you to be well upon your way to Paris. Second,
Espinosa and Jeanne Leclerc were taken as they returned
to Madame Le Vay's ball."
289


What Happened on Night of 27th
away and returned. "But I am wrong. That is not all.
Waberski is indeed for something in all this. For when
he was pressed to make good his charge and must rake
up some excuse for it somehow, by a piece of luck he
thinks of a morning when he saw Betty Harlowe in the
street of Gambetta near to the shop of Jean Cladel. And
so he leads us to the truth. Yes, we owe something to
that animal Boris Waberski. Did I not tell you, Mon-
sieur, that we are all the servants of Chance?"
Hanaud went from the garden and for three days Jim
Frobisher saw him no more. But the development which
Monsieur Bex feared and for which Hanaud hoped took
place, and on the third day Hanaud invited Jim to his
office in the Prefecture.
He had Jim's memorandum in his hand.
"Do you remember what you wrote?" he asked.
"See!" He pushed the memorandum in front of Jim
and pointed to a paragraph.
"But in the absence of any trace cf poison in the dead
woman's body, it is difficult to see how the criminal can
be brought to justice except by:
"(a) A confession.
"(b) The commission of another crime of a similar
kind.
"Hanaud's theory—once a poisoner, always a poisoner."
Frobisher read it through.
"Now that is very true," said Hanaud. "Never have
I come across a case more difficult. At every step we
break down. I think I have my fingers on Jean Cladel.
I am five minutes too late. I think that I shall get some
useful evidence from a firm in Paris. The firm has
ceased to be for the last ten years. All the time I strike
at air. So I must take a risk—yes, and a serious one.
Shall I tell you what that risk was? I have to assume
that Mademoiselle Ann will be brought alive to the Hotel
de Brebizart on that night of Madame Le Vay's ball.
291


What Happened on Night of 27th
Frobisher nodded.
"But now," said Hanaud, leaning forward, "we have
got your condition (a) fulfilled—a confession; a clear
and complete confession from Francine Rollard, and so
many admissions from the Espinosas, and Jeanne Leclerc
and Maurice Thevenet, that they amount to confessions.
We have put them all together, and here is the new part
of the case with which Monsieur Bex and you will have
to deal—the charge not of murder attempted but of
murder committed—the murder of Madame Harlowe."
Jim Frobisher was upon the point of interrupting, but
he thought better of it.
"Go on!" he contented himself with saying.
"Why Betty Harlowe took to writing anonymous
letters, Monsieur—who shall say? The dulness of life
for a girl young and beautiful and passionate in a pro-
vincial town, as our friend Boris suggests? The craving
for excitement? Something bad and vicious and ab-
normal born in her, part of her, and craving more and
more expression as she grew in years? The exacting at-
tendance upon Madame? Probably all of these elements
combined to suggest the notion to her. And suddenly it
became easy for her. She discovered a bill in that box in
Madame Harlowe's bedroom, a receipted bill ten years
old from the firm of Chapperon, builders, of the Rue
de Batignolles in Paris. You, by the way, saw an un-
burnt fragment of the bill in the ashes upon the hearth
of the treasure-room. This bill disclosed to her the
existence of the hidden passage between the treasure-
room and the Hotel de Brebizart. For it was the bill
of the builders who had repaired it at the order of Simon
Harlowe. An old typewriting machine belonging to
Simon Harlowe and the absolute privacy of the Hotel de
Brebizart made the game easy and safe. But as the op-
portunity grew, so did the desire. Betty Harlowe tasted
power. She took one or two people into her confidence—
her maid Francine, Maurice Thevenet, Jeanne Leclerc,
and Jean Cladel, a very useful personage—and once
293


What Happened on Night of 27th
moment the brutal thing is done. Madame Harlowe is
flung back upon her bed. Her mouth is covered and held
by Francine Rollard. The needle does its work. 'That
will do now,' whispers Betty Harlowe. But at the door
of the treasure-room in the darkness Ann Upcott is stand-
ing, unable to identify the voice which whispered, just
as you and I were unable, Monsieur, to identify a voice
which whispered to us from the window of Jean Cladel's
house, but taking deep into her memory the terrible
words. And neither of the murderesses knew it.
"They go calmly about their search for the letters.
They cannot find them, because Madame had pushed them
into the coffer of old bills and papers. They rearrange
the bed, they compose their victim in it as if she were
asleep, they pass into the treasure-room, and they forget
to lock the door behind them. Very likely they visit the
Hotel de Brebizart. Betty Harlowe has the rest of the
arrow-poison and the needle to put in some safe place,
and where else is safe? In the end when every care has
been taken that not a scrap of incriminating evidence is
left to shout 'Murder' the next morning, Betty creeps
up the stairs to make sure that Ann Upcott is asleep; and
Ann Upcott waking, stretches up her hands and touches
her face.
"That, Monsieur," and Hanaud rose to his feet, "is
what you would call the case for the Crown. It is the
case which you and Monsieur Bex have to meet."
Jim Frobisher made up his mind to say the things
which he had almost said at the beginning of this inter-
view.
"I shall tell Monsieur Bex exactly what you have told
me. I shall give him every assistance that I personally or
my firm can give. But I have no longer any formal con-
nection with the defence."
Hanaud looked at Frobisher in perplexity.
"I don't understand, Monsieur. This is not the mo-
ment to renounce a client."
"Nor do I," rejoined Frobisher. "It is the other way
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The House of the Arrow
about. Monsieur Bex put it to me very—how shall I
say?"
Hanaud supplied the missing word with a twitch of his
lips.
"Very correctly."
"He told me that Mademoiselle did not wish to see
me again."
Hanaud walked over to the window. The humiliation
evident in Frobisher's voice and face moved him. He
said very gently, "I can understand that, can't you? She
has fought for a great stake all this last week, her liberty,
her fortune, her good name—and you. Oh, yes," he con-
tinued, as Jim stirred at the table. "Let us be frank!
And you, Monsieur! You were a little different from
her friends. From the earliest moment she set her pas-
sions upon you. Do you remember the first morning I
came to the Maison Grenelle? You promised Ann Upcott
to put up there though you had just refused the same in-
vitation from Betty Harlowe. Such a fury of jealousy
blazed in her eyes, that I had to drop my stick with a
clatter in the hall lest she should recognise that I could not
but have discovered her secret. Well, having fought for
this stake and lost, she would not wish to see you. You
had seen her, too, in her handcuffs and tied by the legs
like a sheep. I understand her very well."
Jim Frobisher remembered that from the moment
Hanaud burst into the room at the Hotel de Brebizart,
Betty had never once even looked at him. He got up
from his chair and took up his hat and stick.
"I must go back to my partner in London with this
story as soon as I have told it to Monsieur Bex," he
said. "I should like it complete. When did you first
suspect Betty Harlowe?"
Hanaud nodded.
"That, too, I shall tell you. Oh, don't thank me! I am
not so sure that I should be so ready with all these con-
fidences, if I was not certain what the verdict in the Assize
298


What Happened on Night of 27th
Court must be. I shall gather up for you the threads
which are still loose, but not here."
He looked at his watch.
"See, it is past noon! We shall once more have
Philippe Le Bon's Terrace Tower to ourselves. It may
be, too, that we shall see Mont Blanc across all the
leagues of France. Come! Let us take your memo-
randum and go there."
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The House of the Arrow
came out to defend her!" he cried. "For it was I who
showed you the telegram."
"Monsieur Frobisher, that would not have mattered
if Betty Harlowe had been, as you believed her, innocent,"
Hanaud replied gravely; and Frobisher was silent.
"Well, then, after my first interview with Betty Har-
lowe, I went over the house whilst you and Betty talked
together in the library!"
"Yes," said Jim.
"And in Mademoiselle Ann's sitting-room I found
something which interested me at the first glance. Now
tell me what it was!" and he cocked his head at Jim with
the hope that his riddle would divert him from his self-
reproaches. And in that to some extent he succeeded.
"That I can guess," Frobisher answered with the ghost
of a smile. "It was the treatise on Sporanthus."
"Yes! The arrow-poison! The poison which leaves
no trace! Monsieur, that poison has been my nightmare.
Who would be the first poisoner to use it? How should I
cope with him and prove that it brought no more security
than arsenic or prussic-acid? These are questions which
have terrified me. And suddenly, unexpectedly, in a
house where a death from heart failure has just occurred,
I find a dry-as-dust treatise upon the poison tucked away
under a pile of magazines in a young lady's sitting-room.
I tell you I was staggered. What was it doing there?
How did it come there? I see a note upon the cover, in-
dicating a page. I turn to the page and there, staring at
me, is an account of Simon Harlowe's perfect specimen
of a poison-arrow. The anonymous letters? They are
at once forgotten. What if that animal Waberski, with-
out knowing it, were right, and Madame Harlowe was
murdered in the Maison Grenelle? I must find that out.
I tuck the treatise up my back beneath my waistcoat and
I go downstairs again, asking myself some questions. Is
Mademoiselle Ann interested in such matters as Sporan-
thus Hispidus? Or had she anything to hope for from
Madame Harlowe's death? Or did she perhaps not know
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The Facade of Notre Dame
her chair in a dead faint before us all. But no! She sat
ready to swallow that tablet at once if there were need,
before my hand could stop her. Once more I say to you,
people who are innocent do not do that."
Jim had no argument wherewith to answer.
"Yes," he was forced to admit. "She could have got
the tablets no doubt from Jean Cladel."
"Very well, then," Hanaud resumed. "We have sepa-
rated for luncheon and in the afternoon the seals are to
be removed. Before that takes place, certain things must
be done. The clock must be moved from the mantelshelf
in the treasure-room on to the marquetry cabinet. Some
letters too must be burnt."
"Yes. Why?" Frobisher asked eagerly.
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
"The letters were burned. It is difficult to say. For
my part I think those old letters between Simon Harlowe
and Madame Raviart alluded too often to the secret pas-
sage. But here I am guessing. What I learnt for certain
during that luncheon hour is that there is a secret passage
and that it runs from the treasure-room to the Hotel de
Brebizart. For this time Nicolas Moreau makes no mis-
take. He follows her to the Hotel de Brebizart and I
from this tower see the smoke rising from the chimney.
Look, Monsieur, there it is! But no smoke rises from it
to-day."
He rose to his feet and turned his back upon Mont
Blanc. The trees in the garden, the steep yellow-patterned
roof, and the chimneys of the Maison Grenelle stood out
above the lesser buildings which surrounded them. Only
from one of the chimneys did the smoke rise to-day, and
that one at the extreme end of the building where the
kitchens were.
"We are back then in the afternoon. The seals are re-
moved. We are in Madame Harlowe's bedroom and
something I cannot explain occurs."
"The disappearance of the necklace," Frobisher ex-
claimed confidently; and Hanaud grinned joyfully.
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The Facade of Notre Dame
not to ask for the envelope with the post mark in which
the anonymous letter was sent. If Betty Harlowe thinks
that she has overreached the old fox Hanaud—good!
Let her think so. So we go upstairs and I find the ex-
planation of that little matter of Betty Harlowe's absence
which has been so troubling me."
Jim Frobisher stared at him.
"No," he said. "I haven't got that. We went into
Ann Upcott's sitting-room. I write my memorandum
with the shaft of the poison arrow and you notice it.
Yes! But the matter of Betty Harlowe's absence! No, I
haven't got that."
"But you have," cried Hanaud. "That pen! It was
not there in the pen-tray on the day before, when I found
the book. There was just one pen—the foolish thing
young ladies use, a great goose-quill dyed red—and
nothing else. The arrow shaft had been placed there
since. When? Why, just now. It is clear, that. Where
was that shaft of the poison-arrow before? In one of
two places. Either in the treasure-room or in the Hotel
de Brebizart. Betty Harlowe has fetched it away during
that hour of freedom; she carries it in her dress; she seizes
her moment when we are all in Madame Harlowe's bed-
room and—pau, pau!—there it is in the pen-tray of
Mademoiselle Ann, to make suspicion still more convinc-
ing! Monsieur, I walk away with Monsieur Bex, who
has some admirable scheme that I should search the
gutters for a match-box full of pearls. I agree—oh yes,
that is the only way. Monsieur Bex has found it! On
the other hand I get some useful information about the
Maison Grenelle and the Hotel de Brebizart. I carry
that information to a very erudite gentleman in the Palace
of the Departmental Archives, and the next morning I
know all about the severe Etienne de Grenelle and the
joyous Madame de Brebizart. So when you and Betty
Harlowe are rehearsing in the Val Terzon, Nicolas
Moreau and I are very busy in the Hotel de Brebizart—
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